


Rise of Arsenal

by chibipooh, lusilly



Series: Earth-28 [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Justice League of America (Comics), Titans (Comics)
Genre: Babysitting, Family, Fluff, Gen, Past Abuse, Summer, Summer Vacation, Trust, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-06 11:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1857120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibipooh/pseuds/chibipooh, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lusilly/pseuds/lusilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lian Harper's death was faked so that her father could intentionally infiltrate Deathstroke's Titans. Lian was safe and tucked away in hiding during this time, and had to be with someone completely unconnected to the family, and yet capable of making sure she wouldn't get hurt.</p><p>Roy chose Jason Todd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Father's Loss

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by conversations about Earth-28 with Tumblr user yancybecket. Tags will be updated to reflect future chapters.
> 
> Officially retconning the whole Rise of Arsenal arc and Roy's time with Deathstroke's Titans at the end of Titans vol. 2.
> 
> Check out lusilly.tumblr.com/tagged/earth-28 for more information about the universe.

            “You want me to _what?_ ”

            “I know it’s a lot,” said Roy sympathetically, burger in hand. “But I need somebody tough who can take care of this. Somebody who’s already part undercover.”

            Chewing his own burger thoughtfully, Jay pointed out: “I’m only undercover because most people think I died when I was a teenager.”

            “Well, you _did_ die,” replied Roy with a shrug, “so they’re not wrong.”

            “Are you kidding me?” muttered Jay, peering out into the night, his red helmet resting on the building’s edge beside them. “I shoot at drug lords and bust petty-ass criminals. You don’t want me around a kid.”

            “That’s exactly why I want you around my kid,” answered Roy. “Drug lords and petty-ass criminals are just the kind of bad guys she’s gonna be fighting one day.”

            Jason considered this for a moment, then took another bite of his burger, chewed, and said: “You know why I don’t hang out with Dick and the others, right?”

            In the night, with the sound of the city below them, Roy didn’t reply immediately. And then, with a small sigh, he said, “I’m in the Justice League, so I can’t…” he trailed off, glanced at Jay, and then started over. “We’re not gonna say it out loud,” he said. “But yeah. I do know. I also know you pretty well at this point, and you know me, and hopefully you know that there ain’t one motherfucker in the world I wouldn’t shoot in the face if he tried to harm her. I don’t care what anybody else says, I need someone who can protect my baby girl.”

            “Why are you doing this?” asked Jay seriously. “Why don’t you just _not_ do it, and stay home with your daughter?”

            “Because,” replied Roy, “I just said, I’m in the Justice League. And I have a shot at this like nobody else does, and because I owe it to Joey Wilson.”

            Jason watched Roy. “Why do you owe Slade’s son?”

            “He’s my friend,” answered Roy.

            Jay narrowed his eyes slightly. Then he said, “I don’t _owe you_ just because-”

            “I’m not guilting you into this,” said Roy, rolling his eyes. “Come on, _like_ you can’t drop everything for a few months to look after a kid. It’d be the easiest gig you ever took. I’ll pay you, if you want, I got a shit ton of Queen money behind me, if you-”

            “Nah,” said Jay, looking back out at the city. “I have my own money. Drug lord, remember?”

            “You’re not a drug lord,” said Roy mildly. “You’re a superhero.”

            “Never been invited to the Justice League.”

            “You don’t need those nerds.”

            “Are you gonna quit?”

            Roy thought about this. “Not permanently, no,” he responded. “But I am gonna hurt them. A lot.”

            Jason didn’t say anything. Then: “Who are you going to tell?”

            With a slight grin Jay’s way, Roy asked, “So is this a yes?”

            “Not a no,” replied Jay. “Who are you telling?”

            “Dick,” responded Roy. “Dinah. Donna. Kory, only because I asked her first and she turned it down.”

            Jay grinned at Roy, and Roy smiled back. Then he got to his feet, discarding the last of the burger in the brown fast-food bag. “This has been,” he said, “a very long day. I can’t believe I came all the way out to this shithole of a city to talk to you.”

            “Me neither,” replied Jay. “I’ll do the thing, Red Arrow.”

            “Knew you would,” said Roy. “Thanks, Red Hood.”

            “Bet your li’l girl hates me, though.”

            “Nah. Nobody could hate you, unless they’re evil, or insecure teenagers like the previous Robin.”

            “He goes by Red Robin, now,” Jay said. “We should start a club.”

            “One requirement,” said Roy, pressing something on the commlink at his ear. “Spend some time with the new Robin first.”

            Jay raised an eyebrow. “Why would I ever want to do that?”

            “Because I doubt you’re any good with kids,” replied Roy. “And you could use some practice.”

            “Robin is _hardly_ a kid-”

            “He’s, what, ten?” asked Roy. “Maybe an old ten, but at the end of the day, a child is a child. And who knows? Maybe he could do with being treated like one.”

            The two of them looked at each other for a long moment, and then Jay said, “Thanks. For trusting me with this.”

            “Mhm,” replied Roy. “Thank Kory. She’s the one who claimed she’d be shit at undercover work.”

            Jay laughed. “True. When do I meet the little angel?”

            “Not ‘til the day of, unfortunately,” said Roy. “And we’re waiting for a cue for that. I can’t give you all the information ‘til then, sorry. But be ready to pack up and leave whenever.”

            “No problem,” said Jay. “Nothing tying me down here, to be honest.”

            Roy grinned, and reached out, clasping Jay’s hand. “So I picked the right guy for the job.”

            With a shrug, Jay only replied: “We’ll see.”

             As he let go of Jason’s hand, he only nodded in response, then turned slightly away. Obviously responding to the commlink at his ear, he answered, “Uh-huh, baby, I’m comin’ home right now. Isn’t it past bedtime for you?” He waved once at Jay, and then left, descending and disappearing into the night.

\----

            Jason’s phone (his _work phone_ , he always called it) rang while he was staring at the TV, gaping at the news there, something sinking in his stomach. He picked it up immediately, unable to untangle the knot squeezing in his chest. “Hey,” came Dick’s breathless voice. “Plans got pushed up a little.”

            “No kidding,” replied Jay, watching the ruins of Star City on the TV before him. “They didn’t stage that, did they?”

            “No,” replied Dick, but he sounded like he really, deeply wished they had, “but it’s our in. Donna has her out of there already, Dinah’s taking care of the details. I can connect you to a JLA transporter, you don’t have to take anything, we’ll get you supplies once you’re there.”

            “Where is _there?_ ” asked Jay, and then he asked, “Where’s Roy?”

            “Kansas,” replied Dick.

            “Roy’s in Kansas?”

            “No, you’re going to Kansas. Roy’s recovering at the Watchtower.”

            “Recovering-?”

            Something urgent and almost frustrated entered Dick’s voice as he replied, sharply, “There was a complication. Things are going ahead as planned, and Donna’s going to meet you at the house, but she has to get back to the League. Or to Star City.”

            Jay began, cautiously, “If I can help more in there-”

            “You can help by doing what you promised Roy you would,” said Dick, his voice hard. “The whole country’s looking at Star City right now, not to mention the entire Justice League. I’m sending you the League codes right now. Donna might not be there yet, she’s going to stay in orbit until we’re sure they’re off the radar.”

            “In _orbit?_ Dick, what the fuck? I am so unequipped for-”

            “It’s a nine-year-old in a house for a month or so,” said Dick simply. “You’ll figure it out.” Dick said, “When you get there, don’t call me until I contact you first,” and then hung up as the codes reached Jay, and his access to the JLA transporters was authorized.

            It was a few minutes later that Jay was standing outside an old farmhouse under the early summer sun, a breeze sweeping through the trees around him. He glanced around. Any trace of the transporter which had brought him there had disappeared. He had no fucking clue how that worked, but he did know his stomach felt vaguely upset, almost as if seasick.

            He looked up at the two-story farmhouse, pale blue with white trim and a porch that curved around the front of the home. Hanging flower pots hung from the edge of the roof, and there was silence except for the organic sounds of the forest surrounding the house, birds tweeting and flying around. Since Roy had come to him, he’d had a big duffel bag full of supplies ready, and he made his way up the lawn to the front of the house, realizing Roy hadn’t given him a key or anything, wondering if he was going to have to break into the home he’d be sharing with a kid for the next few months.

            A kid. A drug-lord-criminal-killer-raised-from-the-dead and a nine-year-old. It was like a remake of _Léon The Professional_ , starring Lian Harper as a young Natalie Portman. (OK, Jay hoped not.)

            He gave the house a once over, testing windows and knocking at loose panels, seeing if he could get in. It was better protected than he’d anticipated; the windows weren’t regular glass, and after a little testing, he pulled out one of his handguns and shot straight at one in the back; it reverberated, trembling in its frame, but did not break, bouncing the bullet up at an angle to sail above Jay’s head. Impressed, he went back to the front door, then took out his phone, debating on whether or not to ignore what Dick had said, and just call him right there, because he didn’t know how he was getting in otherwise. Maybe he had to wait for Donna to get there.

            While he waited, parking his ass down in the rocking chair in the porch, he tried to use any of his phones or devices to check out the area, but none of them worked; he had no idea where he was. A literal deadzone. He thought about running, just taking off in a direction until he figured out where he was and got the hell home. But then he didn’t, because Dick was right, and he told Roy he would. For some unfathomable reason.

            It was almost an hour before Donna and Lian appeared, the little girl wrapped in Donna’s arms as the woman descended from the sky and alit gently on the ground. Jason stood up and waved at Donna, who put Lian down and waved back. Lian adjusted the bright red backpack on her shoulders, then looked up at the house, where Jay stood. He didn’t walk towards them. Donna took her hand and tugged her towards the porch, leading her up the three steps to where Jason waited for them.

            “Hope you guys brought a key,” he said, nodding towards the house. “Otherwise we’re stuck, and this is awkward.”

            “Lian,” said Donna, all but ignoring Jay’s comment, “this is Jason. He’s nice, and he’ll protect you until your dad can come back and get you.”

            “When’s that gonna be?” asked Lian, taking her hand away from Donna.

            “I don’t know,” replied Donna honestly. “A while. A month, maybe.”

            Lian eyed Donna suspiciously, then glanced at Jay. He said, “Hey,” because he didn’t know what else to say. She seemed extraordinarily judgmental, for a nine-year-old.

            “You can’t get in?” she asked, nodding at the door.

            “Nope,” Jay replied.

            “Did you look under the welcome mat?” she asked.

            Jay blinked at her. She went to the mat before the door and picked it up. There was no key door. “Look, kid,” he began. “I think your daddy is a _little_ smarter than-”

            “Donna,” said Lian, looking up at the woman. She pointed at one of the hanging flower pots, and Donna smiled benevolently at her, then at Jay, then retrieved a key from amongst the flowers, and handed it to the girl. She held it up in front of Jason, then opened the screen door, and slipped it into the lock. Jay looked at Donna, who only continued to smile at him.

            “Go inside, Lian,” she said. “Jason will be right behind you.”

            “OK,” said Lian, and then, leaving the door open, she threw her arms around Donna’s waist, and kissed her cheek when Donna leaned down. “Give that to my daddy for me,” she said. “Tell him I love him, and make sure he’s OK without me.”

            “I will, baby,” Donna replied.

            Lian took Donna’s hand and squeezed. “Tell Mia I love her too,” she said. “She’s gonna think it’s her fault.”

            Jason watched Donna’s face, watched the way her expression tightened, and the way she kept a smile on her face, but it became difficult.

            Lian let go of Donna’s hand, but reached up to pat her arm gently. “Don’t cry,” she said. “Jason doesn’t look like he’s good at helping people when they cry.”

            Then she turned around and ran into the house, her little backpack bouncing on her back. Donna looked after her, eyes big and open and vulnerable. Jay stood there uncertainly, unsure of what to do.

            Then Donna looked at him. “Keep her safe,” she said. “You have the best security around here we could come up with. Superman’s parents are less than a hundred miles west, and Keystone – Flash – is just as close in the opposite direction. The nearest town is three miles down that road,” she pointed at a narrow path through the forest, “and there’s a truck somewhere around here that should still be functioning.”

            “Yeah,” said Jay. “I saw it.”

            “If you need groceries or anything, use that,” she said. “There’s a lot of cash in the house, use that.”

            “I brought some of my own,” he said.

            “Yeah,” she replied. “Roy thought you would. Be gentle. The town is safe, we checked it out.” She handed a communicator to him. “This is the only thing we’ll be contacting you through. Don’t make any phone calls, or any communication of any kind, through anything else. Are we clear?”

            Jason watched her for a second, then nodded.

            “OK,” she said, glancing back into the house. “Any questions?”

            “Too late to back out?” he asked, only half joking.

            “Yes,” she replied seriously.

            “How’s Roy?”

            “He’s bad,” she said. “And things are only going to get worse for him. But he knew what he was getting into, and this is precisely why he needs her out of the picture.”

            “One more thing,” Jay said. “Does she scare easy?”

            “No,” replied Donna honestly. “And neither do you, Jay. Come on. She’s a little girl. You’ll be all right.”

            “What if Roy made a bad choice?”

            “Jason,” Donna began, “you would shoot me, and kill me, if you thought I would harm Lian.”

            “Yes,” said Jay cautiously, “but isn’t that the reason why-”

            “-the reason why Roy chose you?” she finished for him, lowering her head slightly to meet his gaze. “Yes. It exactly is.”

            Jason watched her, and then she reached out and took his shoulder. “You don’t have to be a father,” she told him. “Just a glorified bodyguard. Dick says you’re more than proficient with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and that’s just about the most complex skill you need to deal with this precious little girl. She can do the rest herself.”

            The sound of feet on hardwood floors, and then Lian leaned out the door. “Hey,” she said, to Jason. “I get the bedroom with the bathroom in it.” And then she ran off again, back into the house.

            “Thank you,” said Donna, sincerely. “I have to go.”

            “Yeah,” said Jay. “Thanks.”

            “Just be nice to her,” she added. “It’ll be easier than you think.”

            “Yeah,” he said. “Go. League needs you.”

            She nodded, reached out, took Jay’s hand, and then turned to leave, flying out into the summer sky. Jason didn’t move for a minute, looking up even as she disappeared into a sea of blue studded with thin white clouds. And then he leaned down to pick up his duffel bag, and headed into the house, closing the door behind him. Lian had already turned on all of the lights, opened half the windows, and had the TV on, clicking through channels. Landing on some cartoons on Nickelodeon, she abandoned the television, following Jay as he dropped his stuff on the dining room table and poked around the kitchen. She stood by the table, one hand on the back of a chair as he opened the fridge – fully stocked, and everything was reasonably fresh, too. He rooted around for some peanut butter and some jelly, then grabbed a loaf of bread.

            “You hungry?” he asked roughly, glancing around at her.

            “Yes,” she replied. “Donna gave me some Oreos, but I’m still hungry.”

            “Sandwich OK?” he asked, already assembling one for each of them.

            “Yes,” she said again. “Can you cut the crusts off mine?”

            “You’re not gonna grow all big and tough like me if you don’t eat the crusts. They’re the healthy part.”

            “The crust is gross,” she declared, coming over to stand beside him, a head’s height over the edge of the counter, small for a nine-year-old, definitely a few solid inches shorter than Damian.

            “You’re right,” he said. “It’s pretty gross.” He paused, finished slathering jelly onto one side and peanut butter on the other, and put the two pairs together, making two separate sandwiches. “If I cut the crusts off mine too,” he said, “promise not to tell on me?”

            She looked at him as if this were the most redundant question in the world. “Tell who?” she asked.

            He blinked at her, then shrugged, slicing the crusts off both sandwiches. “Good point,” he said, then handed her the sandwich.

            She took a bite and, still standing at the counter, he took a bite of his. They didn’t say anything for a moment, chewing on their sandwiches. “Milk,” she said, after she swallowed her bite. She held out the sandwich, and he took it from her, then placed it back on the plate on the counter as she opened the fridge and stretched on her tiptoes to reach a half-gallon of milk. She pointed up at the cabinets impatiently, and Jay opened them, rooted around for two glasses, which she poured milk into, and then replaced it in the fridge.

            Then she took her glass and the plate on which her sandwich rested, and went to the dining room table. “My daddy would make me eat some vegetables too,” she said, sliding onto the chair.

            Jay followed her, taking a seat before his duffel bag. “Jelly’s practically a vegetable,” he said.

            “No it’s not,” she replied. “It comes from grapes. Grapes are fruits.”

            “Grapes are berries,” he corrected, then he went to place his sandwich down, and she offered her plate, which they then shared.

            “Berries are fruits,” she added, unimpressed.

            Without deigning to respond to this, he unzipped his bag, rooting through it. “You know how to play poker?” he asked, taking out a deck of cards.

            “Yes,” she replied, looking up at him. “I brought Scrabble and Uno.”

            “Ah,” he said. “I hate Scrabble.”

            “Good,” she said. “I like winning.”

            He glanced up at her, and she beamed at him. He went back to his bag, to the plastic trash bag full of crisp twenties, a scarce lump of clothes, and what took up the most of the room: a collection of weapons that would make any arms expert blush, which clacked together as he rooted through them, causing Lian to perk up and get on her knees, still chewing on the edges of her sandwich. Reaching out to point into the bag, she asked, “Glock 22?”

            Eyebrows raised, he looked up at her. She chewed her sandwich innocently, looking back at him.

            “My dad prefers the M1911,” she said, shrugging. “Because it’s better.”

            “It’s easy,” he replied. “Every nutcase with a gun fetish has one of those.”

            “Why do you have a Bushmaster?” she asked. “Those are for hunting.”

            “Well,” he replied, closing the bag so she couldn’t see anything else. “I thought maybe you’d like some fresh venison.”

            She took another bite out of her sandwich. “What’s venison?” she asked.

            “Deer,” he replied.

            “Is it yummy?”

            “Dunno. Never actually tried it.”

            “We should do that.”

            He watched her for a second, and then nodded. “We’ll see,” he said.

            “Have you ever shot a deer?”

            He lifted the bag from the table and put it on the floor. “Not a deer, no.”

            “My cousin Connor,” she began, “who’s actually my uncle I guess, but I like him as my cousin because he’s pretty young, like Mia, and she’s like my cousin too. Connor doesn’t believe in eating animals. He wouldn’t want to kill one either.”

            “That’s funny,” responded Jay, sitting down and taking his sandwich back. “My little brother is the same way.”

            Lian chewed on her bite, sitting on her knees, watching Jay inquisitively. “You have a little brother?” she asked, through a partly-full mouth.

            “I have two, technically,” he replied. “They’re both unbelievably annoying.”

            Lian laughed, tickled. “My dad says that Connor’s his little brother,” she said, “and he says he’s really annoying too.”

            “Well, then,” said Jay, “your dad and I have a lot in common.”

            She looked back at her sandwich. And then she said, “I think my daddy got hurt.”

            Jason didn’t say anything.

            “Donna wouldn’t let me talk to him.”

            “You can’t talk to him,” said Jason. “He’s gonna be gone for a while.”

            “I know,” Lian replied, looking at him. “He told me. I know I’m being brave and I’m gonna be alone for a little bit. I mean I’m gonna be with you. But I think he’s hurt. Is he gonna die?”

            “No,” said Jason.

            “Everyone thinks I died,” she said.

            “Not everyone,” said Jason.

            “I’m sad for Mia,” she said. “Mia thinks I died.”

            “Hey,” said Jay, putting his sandwich down, looking at her in the eye. “Don’t worry about that. Just hang out here for a while. We’ll play some poker, some Uno. I can show you just what a Bushmaster Predator can do to a buck. It’ll be fun.”

            Lian was silent for a moment. And then she asked: “Is a buck a daddy deer?”

            Jay blinked. “Um,” he began. “I think.”

            “OK,” she said.

            Neither of them said anything, but Lian went back to her sandwich. She was not quite halfway done with hers, whereas Jay had taken only a few bites, and had barely a quarter left. “It’ll be fun,” he repeated, watching her, the simple, automatic way she ate her food. “Dying’s not so bad, kiddo. Take it from me.”

            Lian went to bed in the master bedroom, and Jay awkwardly offered to tuck her in, but she just gave him a disdainful look and told him to make sure all the windows and doors were locked, and check the alarm system again before he went to sleep. He promised he would, and she said, “If I go to sleep, you have to go to sleep. That’s the deal I have with my daddy.”

            To which he replied, “I ain’t your daddy, sweetheart,” and let her glare at him as he turned off the lights and closed the door halfway behind him, leaving the hallway light on so it could stream into the room if she needed it.

            He checked the windows, the doors, and the alarms, and then shuffled into the room adjacent to where Lian slept, keeping that door open as well despite the light from the hall, so he’d be able to hear her if she got up for anything.

            The night was quiet and still in the old house, and he was just about to drift off to sleep, the anxious knot in his stomach he hadn’t even acknowledged loosening slightly, when he heard a little girl’s gentle, sniffling cries from the other room. A part of him wanted to get up and go to her, sit by her side, maybe hold her hand, if she needed. But the stronger part of him didn’t know what he would do; didn’t know how to help a little girl, didn’t know how to help someone who was crying, didn’t know how to pretend to be a father that she wouldn’t see for weeks to come, if not months. She was just a baby, and that made her vulnerable, and that scared Jason, because he was prone to break things that were delicate to the touch, and he didn’t even know what a nine-year-old might need because when he was nine, he needed a home to sleep in and some food for the night, and she already had all of that, didn’t she? What more could he give her?

            He was still awake when she slowly fell silent, and gentle breathing replaced her cries.

            It was only then that he realized how long she’d waited, until all sounds of him moving around the house had stopped, until she was as sure as a kid could be that he wasn’t listening.

            He thought, fiercely, so strongly it felt like it burned him, _I’m never going to let her cry like that again_ , and, finally, he realized why Roy had asked him to do this.


	2. Staring Into the Abyss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason attempts to cook macaroni and cheese; they get ice cream.

            The first week was the worst. Jay spent a lot of time outside, hating the simple hominess of the big house, the crocheted quilts lining the back of the couch, the big, cozy armchairs where Lian would curl up with three Babysitter Club paperbacks, eyes skating across the pages. There were little signs hanging in the kitchen that said things like _GRAMMA KNOWS BEST_ and _BLESS OUR MESS_ , and by Thursday night Jason had taken them all down and thrown them unceremoniously in a bottom drawer. He had fed Lian nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and milk for three days. She didn’t say much to him; she was usually up first, and he was a light sleeper, so the pitter-patter of her feet in the hallway would wake him up each morning, her teeth brushed, hair wet from a shower, which she would braid as he lumbered after her and made them both breakfast sandwiches, toasting the bread to differentiate it from lunch and dinner sandwiches (dinner sandwiches came with a bag of Fritos).

            Then he’d go outside. It was too warm to light a fire inside, but there was a ton of fire wood out back, and an axe, and he took great pleasure in splitting the wood into smaller and smaller pieces, shedding his shirt in the summer sun. Lian occasionally would fetch a Capri-Sun (from where, he had no idea, since he hadn’t been able to find anything but milk and orange juice in the fridge) and come out and watch him, a bored expression on her face. She didn’t talk much, and part of him was grateful for that, but the other part resented it; he didn’t talk much either, so there was nothing but silence between them, awkward and impenetrable.

            At some point Lian would wander away, back to the big garage behind the house. Jay didn’t like following her, but his promise to Roy stayed in the back of his mind, and he kept her in his sight. The first day she went to the garage, she couldn’t get the door open, and so threw a pointed look his way; something occurred to him, and he said, “Hold on a second,” and pulled out the small gun he’d been keeping in his waistband. “Stay back,” he told her, shooing her away from the door.

            “There’s nobody in there,” she said, annoyed.

            “There might be,” he said.

            “There isn’t,” she replied, then she walked up to the garage door and knocked on it, hard. She placed her ear against it, then said, “I can’t hear any movement.”

            “Just because your dad is clumsy and loud,” said Jay, “doesn’t mean everybody is. Back off.”

            “You back off,” she said bluntly, glancing him up and down. “I can take care of myself. And that gun couldn’t kill anyone unless you shoot it point-blank.”

            “I’m not trying to kill anyone,” he said.

            She placed her hands on her hips and demanded, “Why not?”

            Jay watched her for a moment. Then he put the gun back into his waistband and said, “Fine. Help me open this door, then, little girl.”

            Together – Jay did all of the work, although he let Lian think she was helping – they tugged the large garage door open, revealing an old, rusty, broken-down tractor.

            “Stay out here,” he said, and as she began to protest, he said, “Just _stay_ here for a second, OK?” and drew the gun again, checking the corners, testing for any loose panels on the floor which may lead to basements. Nothing. “OK,” he said, coming back out to the door. “All clear.”

            He looked around.

            “Lian?” he asked, and as soon as he said her name, a spike of fear shot up his spine, and he called, “Lian!” again, more urgent this time, almost panicked.

            “Mhm?”

            He whipped around: she stood on the huge tire of the tractor, grinning at him.

            “You worry too much,” she said, stepping onto the dusty floor of the garage as he put the gun away. “Daddy says a little worry is good, but a lot will turn your hair gray.” She pointed up at Jay’s forehead. “You worry too much.”

            For a moment, he was confused, and then his hand flickered up to touch the white streak of hair he rarely even noticed anymore. “This,” he said, pointing at his hair, “is not from worrying too much.”

            “Yes it is,” she said.

            “No it’s not,” he replied, annoyed.

            “Yes it is,” she said obstinately. “You have a gun in your pants. That means you worry too much.”

            “That means I’m _careful_ -”

            “I’m careful,” she countered, “and I don’t have a gun in my pants.”

            “You’re too young for a gun in your pants,” he said derisively.

            She held up her hands pressed together, forefingers out to make a pretend gun. “Bang!” she said. “You’re dead.”

            “No, I’m not dead,” he said.

            “Yes you are,” she said, again. Then she lowered her hands and pointed to a shelf on the wall. “Get me that toolbox.”

            He didn’t move for a second, then trudged over to the shelf, taking down a large, heavy box, which he opened on the counter first, inspecting it for any serious signs of danger. Mostly wrenches and screwdrivers and stuff, nothing she could really hurt herself with. He put it down on the floor for her, and she knelt down, pawing through it.

            “So why _is_ your hair white, then, Grumpypants?” she asked disinterestedly, taking out a few huge wrenches.

            “I ate a piece of chalk once,” he replied, watching her play with the tools. “What are you doing?”

            “I think the carburetor is busted,” she said. “We’re going into town soon, I need supplies.”

            “What do you know,” he began, raising an eyebrow and crouching down beside her, “about tractor carburetors?”

            “This is a Ferguson TO-30 tractor with four-cylinder eight-valve liquid-cooled l-head engine,” she said, smartly, still picking through the toolbox, “and a Marvel Schebler TSX 458 updraft carburetor that I want to replace.”

            Jay gaped at her. She looked up at him.

            “Do you want me to draw you a picture?” she asked.

            His first thought was, _Wow, little girls are bitches_ , but he didn’t say that because the b-word was inappropriate for a nine-year-old.

            “Hey,” he said. “If we’re going into town soon, this is a good time to talk about secret identities. Dick sent me some documents that say my name is Miles Haywood, and you’re my little sister, Jade.”

            Lian let out a little _hmph_.

            “What?” he asked.

            “Sister?” she asked doubtfully, glancing him up and down. “You’re as old as Daddy.”

            “What?” he asked again, offended. “Your dad is like, at least ten years older than me.”

            She watched him with the most judgmental stare he’d ever gotten from a nine-year-old.

            “Like,” he said, “no less than seven…ish.”

            “And _not_ Jade,” she said. “Donna.”

            “Not Donna,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re not supposed to use names we know.”

            “My mom is named Jade,” countered Lian.

            “Your mom is named Cheshire,” said Jay.

            Lian fixed him with one of those looks again. “Is Mia’s name Speedy?” she asked, with impressive derision for such a little girl. “Is my daddy’s name Red Arrow?”

            It occurred to Jay for the first time that he didn’t actually know what Cheshire’s real name was; Roy called her _Chesh_ whenever he brought her up, and she’d never interested Jason enough to look her up.

            As he thought this, she added, “You’re Jason. But what’s your other name?”

            He blinked back to the present. “Oh,” he said. “Red Hood.”

            Her face split into a grin, and she giggled. “Like Little Red Riding Hood,” she said.

            “No,” he replied.

            “Yes,” she said.

            He narrowed his eyes. “Stop doing that.”

            “What?”

            “Being contrary. It’s not flattering.”

            She looked at him for a moment, then cocked her head slightly. “What’s _contrary_?”

            “What you’re doing right now,” he replied. “Saying the opposite of whatever I say just because you think it’s funny.”

            Placing the tools in her hands on the floor, she looked up at him gravely. “I don’t think it’s funny,” she said seriously. “I think you’re wrong.”

            He met her gaze. “All the time?”

            “All the time,” she said, nodding. “Boys usually are.”

            Jason laughed. “Your dad tell you that?” he asked. When she nodded, he continued, “Yeah, he’ll be saying that for the next twenty years, I bet. Gonna be rough for him when you hit puberty.”

            Lian looked down at her tools again, and something seemed to have leached out of her expression. “I hate boys,” she murmured, and Jason laughed again.

            “Keep on saying that,” he said. “You’ll make your dad a very happy man.”

            “Stop talking about my dad,” she said. Then she looked up at him. “I want peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches tonight,” she said. “Daddy makes them for me when I’m good.”

            “Let’s make a deal,” he replied. “I’ll make you as many peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches as you want. As soon as you get this tractor up and running again.”

            He grinned at her, and she watched him, then smiled back, almost shyly. They spent a few hours in there; Jay had to go searching for a box big enough for Lian to stand on so she could inspect the engine, but when they finally got down to it, he could see that she’d obviously been taught the technical stuff, and had an intuitive way of figuring out what was wrong, even if she couldn’t quite explain it to him. He’d never worked with tractors before, but it was easy enough to see that the engine needed to be fixed up a little but the thing should work fine, with the right replacement parts.

            “Come on,” he said, sliding the garage door shut again, as she clutched some metal parts in her little hands. He took them from her, and nodded towards the house. “Get cleaned up. Dinnertime.”

            “Nutella?”

            “PB and J,” he replied, following her towards the back door of the house. “Unless you have a healthier alternative.”

            She held the door open for him, and then went in, closing and locking the door behind her. He followed her into the bathroom, where she washed her hands, and he gingerly laid the mechanical parts on a small towel, then washed his as well.

            “You could make food,” she said reasonably. “ _Can_ you make food?”

            “Sure,” he replied. “I eat food all the time. I’m good at making it.”

            “More than sandwiches.”

            “More than sandwiches. What do you feel like?”

            She considered this for a few minutes, and then, as he dried his hands on another towel, she ventured: “Mac n cheese?”

            “Mac n cheese?” he echoed. “Excellent. I love that shit. That stuff! Stuff. Sorry.”

            “It’s OK,” she said, shrugging and heading back to the kitchen. “You just have to put a dollar in the swear jar.”

            Suspiciously, he watched her kneel down and root through some cabinets. “What swear jar?”

            “This one,” she replied, straightening up with a mason jar in hand. She opened another drawer and took out a Sharpie, and carefully wrote S-W-E-A-R-J-A-R on the front in neat block letters, then held it out to him expectantly.

            “Joke’s on you,” he said. “I don’t have any one dollar bills.”

            She shook the jar. “I take twenties, too.”

            “Twenties!” he repeated. “Sit down, little girl.”

            Saying nothing, she shook the jar again. He did not move, and then, with a defeated sigh, he turned around, fetched a crisp twenty dollar bill out of the bag under his bed, and brought it back into the kitchen, tucking it into the jar.

            Satisfied, she placed the jar on the kitchen table. “Ice cream money,” she said wisely. “You think there’s an ice cream truck that comes out here?”

            “No,” he replied, searching through the cupboards. “I haven’t heard one at all.”

            She lifted herself onto a chair at the table, watching him. “Maybe there’s an ice cream place in town.”

            “I’m sure there is,” he said, then he turned around to look at her. “Look, kid, I hate to say it, but I don’t see any Easy Mac anywhere.”

            “Easy Mac?” echoed Lian, almost disbelievingly. “Aren’t you a grown-up?”

            Indignantly, Jay replied, “Yes, but-”

            “Is there pasta?” she asked.

            He paused, then glanced through the cupboard. “Yes,” he said.

            “Is there cheese?”

            He opened the fridge, but she just let out a sigh of disappointment and slipped off the chair, opening the cupboard again.

            “This is cheese,” she said, taking out a block that said VELVEETA on it in big red letters.

            “No,” said Jay cautiously. “That’s rubber. Most of the ingredients in that shouldn’t even be legal.”

            “But,” countered Lian, as if this were obvious, “it’s yummy.”

            Jason considered this for a moment, then shrugged. “OK,” he said. “Mac and cheese from scratch. Can’t be too hard.”

            It was just past seven o’clock when they were forced out of the house to the front porch, coughing from the smoke of a badly, badly, badly burnt attempt at macaroni and cheese.

            “You said you could _cook!_ ” Lian shrieked, banging the screen door behind her.

            “I said I could _make food_ ,” replied Jay, opening all the windows, then following her out to the porch. “Slightly different. Plus, I mean. It definitely is _cooked_.”

            “It’s so burnt,” she said, holding her nose. “You burn things!”

            “I do,” he said, guilt in his voice, and it was only half-feigned. “It’s a problem.”

            She parked down on the steps going up to the porch, and, after a few moments, he collapsed onto the rocking chair again. It was early summer, and still light out, although there was a rim of golden pink lining the horizon above the tops of the trees.

            “Pretty,” he said.

            “Yeah,” she replied. After another minute or so, she said: “I miss my dad.”

            “Really?” he asked. “But I’m so much more fun.”

            She didn’t glance around at him. “He wouldn’t have messed up mac and cheese,” she said, partly like an accusation, but mostly wistfully. “He makes really good food, and he makes a lot so we always have leftovers.”

            Jay didn’t say anything in reply. He’d fucked this one up, and he knew it.

            “Except when he has bad days,” she continued, looking down at the grass in front of the house, “we have Easy Mac, or chicken nuggets. Connor puts a lot of vegetarian chicken nuggets in the fridge, but Daddy doesn’t like those.”

            Sliding down the steps, she sat down in the grass, picking at a patch of dandelions. “Does your daddy have bad days a lot?” Jason asked, wishing he knew what to say.

            “No,” she replied, then she shrugged. “He’s sad a lot. But he’s always not-sad when I’m home, before I go to sleep. I keep him safe.”

            The bright yellow petals of the weed floated away as she picked them from the bud.

            Lian said, “I wonder if he’s safe without me.”

            “He’ll be fine,” said Jason immediately, as if by rote. “Your dad’s survived worse than this.”

            “Nothing’s worse than being away from me,” Lian said, without looking up at him.

            They sat there as the sun sank below the horizon, and the warm nighttime air was filled with the buzzing and chirping of insects, come out of hiding in the dark.

            Jay sat up and stretched slightly, watching the little girl. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’m still hungry.”

            She stood up, dusted the dirt off her pants, and turned around to look at him. “Do we have bananas?” she asked. “Peanut butter and banana sandwiches would be good.”

            As she came back up the steps and headed into the house, he said, “Nah. Real food. Real food that isn’t burnt to a crisp because you distracted me with your awesome cartoons.”

            Rolling her eyes and closing the windows by the door, she replied, “ _Adventure Time_ is for kids.”

            “Well, I’m a big kid,” he said, helping her reach the top of the window. “I like the princess. Princess Candy?”

            “Princess Bubblegum,” she informed him. “She loves Marcy.”

            “Marcy?” he echoed. “The vampire girl?”

            Lian only nodded, going to the counter, looking at Jay’s blackened, failed attempt at cooking. “Gross,” she said.

            “Very gross,” he said. “You ready to see if that old truck out back actually works? Let’s go grab some McDonald’s or something in town.”

            There was, it turned out, no McDonald’s in the town.  It was a quiet, homey, nice little Midwestern town, where everybody had a little bit of a twang, and there didn’t seem to be any brand name stores anywhere. The closest thing to real fast food was a diner on the edge of town, greasy and torn right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. By the time they sat down, it was dark outside.

            “Hello, sweethearts,” said the waitress, a short, plump white woman, grinning at them, hair a bluish white, wrinkles pronounced by a thick layer of makeup. She had a slight lilt, but a beautiful smile. “Passing through?”

            “No,” replied Lian, beaming up at the woman. “We live here.”

            The waitress – her nametag said Judith – raised her eyebrows. “Are you the ones up in the old Smith house?” she asked. “That home’s been empty for years an’ years. Can’t even remember who it rightly belongs to anymore!”

            “It was grandmama’s,” declared Lian, getting to her knees on the plastic seat of the booth. Jay glanced at her, tried to catch her eye to indicate to her to stop talking, but she just extended her hand, and said, “My name is Donna Haywood, this is my cousin Miles, and our grandma owned that house for so long! But never lived in it. She’s from Central City.”

            “Central!” repeated Judith, taking Lian’s hand and shaking it gently. “What brings you two city kids all the way out here yo East Jesus?”

            Lian’s face immediately fell, and Jay opened his mouth, ready to intervene, but she just replied: “Grandmama…went to heaven a while ago. I miss her lots. My bestest cousin said we could spend the summer in her house, so we don’t forget her.” The little girl threw herself at Jay, wrapping her arms around his bicep, holding him tightly.

            Judith looked moved. Jay did his best not to roll his eyes. “That’s mighty sweet,” she said. “Well, welcome to our podunk little hick-town, I do hope you enjoy your stay here, sweethearts. What can I get for you, Miss Donna?”

            Lian had chicken strips, and Jay had a burger. It was a good burger, and he enjoyed it, although not half as good as that burger joint on the corner of Kane and 2nd back in Gotham. For one brief, unsettling moment, he found himself missing that hellhole of a city, and then Lian asked for two extra servings of ranch, and he thought, _Wow, fuck that_.

            “Hey,” he said, getting her attention by tapping on the table before her, then leaning in. She drenched a piece of her crispy chicken strip with ranch and popped it into her mouth innocently, watching him. “Didn’t we agree on _Jade?_ ”

            She shook her head. “Donna,” she insisted, mouth half-full. “Can’t use Jade, that’s my middle name, and you can’t do that.”

            He narrowed her eyes at her. “Are you lying to me?”

            “No,” she replied. “My middle name is Jade. Pinky swear.” She held out her hand, little finger extended, and after a moment he wrapped his around hers, and they shook. “What’s your middle name?” she asked, dipping the chicken in sauce again.

            He watched her, then said, “Peter.”

            “Peter?” she echoed, then took a bite. “Is your daddy’s name Peter?”

            “No,” replied Jason.

            One eyebrow cocked, watching him. “Isn’t your middle name supposed to be your daddy or mommy’s name?”

            “No,” replied Jason. “Who told you that?”

            She shrugged. “Mine is.”

            There was a short silence. Jay started in on his burger.

            And then Lian asked, “Is your daddy B-” At the look on Jay’s face, she stopped, glanced around, and then got on her knees and leaned across the table. Placing her hands around her mouth, she whispered to him, “Is your daddy Batman?”

            “No,” said Jay shortly. “And don’t talk like that in public.”

            Eyebrows raised, she sat back down in her seat. “You’re Uncle Dick’s brother, aren’t you?” she charged him. “The bad one.”

            “The _bad_ one-?”

            “You hurt people,” she said, with a shrug. “Don’t worry, I already know. You’re supposed to shoot deers with that Bushmaster, but you said you didn’t know how it tastes.”

            Jay watched her. “Maybe I shoot other things,” he said.

            “I know you shoot other things,” she replied, without missing a beat. “I just think they’re things that aren’t animals.”

            “Hey,” said Jason, glancing around. “Keep it down, OK?”

            “Who taught you how to shoot?” she asked, gazing at him.

            “Superman,” he replied.

            Her eyes lit up. “Really?”

            “No,” he said.

            “Then who?”

            “Who taught _you_?”

            “My dad,” she replied. “Last year I got to shoot my first gun.”

            Jason stared at her. “How old are you?”

            “Nine,” she replied, placing her chicken fingers and French fries on her plate to make a smiley face. “Daddy took me to a shooting range. He says I have to wait ‘til I’m ten for a semi-automatic, but I think I’m ready.”

            Cautiously, Jason began, “If your dad says-”

            Rolling her eyes, Lian replied, “My dad is my _dad_. He won’t let me do anything.”

            “Except shoot guns. At eight years old.”

            She made a face, the roll of her eyes more extreme and derisive, and asked, “When did you start shooting guns?”

            “I don’t know,” he told her. “Sixteen.”

            “With Batman?”

            “ _Hey_!”

            “Nobody’s listening!”

            “Donna Haywood,” said Jason, looking at her seriously, “there is _always_ someone listening.”

            She watched him warily for a moment, then said: “You’re paranoid.”

            With a shrug, he responded, “How I was raised.”  
            Again, she leaned forward, a grin on her face, a dab of ranch dressing at the corner of her lips. Stubbornly, she repeated, “Who taught you how to shoot?”

            Reaching out to wipe her mouth with his napkin, he replied: “A friend.”

            “What kind of friend?”

            “A nice friend,” he said.

            “A girlfriend?”

            “No,” he said, immediately.

            Lian watched him intently. “A boyfriend?”

            “No,” he said.

            “Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

            “No,” he said. “Have you?”

            She made a face. “Gross.”

            “Very gross,” he agreed. “Eat your damn fries.”

            “Swear jar,” she said, then held out her hand expectantly.

            “No,” he said, and then he thought this was the most times he’d ever in his life said _No_ so many times in a row. “Not ‘til we get home.”

            “You’ll forget,” she countered. “Twenty.”

            Patiently, she met his gaze, her outstretched, expected hand held across the table. “Hold on until I pay the bill,” he said. “I’ll get you change.”

            “Now,” she said, then she twitched her fingers, as if gesturing: _Come on_.

            There was something so much more than nine years old in the determined, amused look in her eye. After another moment, Jason let out a small sigh, and produced a wallet, plucked out a fresh twenty, and handed it to her.

            “Excellent,” she said, folding it and tucking it into her pants, like some pint-sized supervillain. Then she dipped a French fry in ketchup and said, “I want a milkshake.”

            “I want a million dollars,” retorted Jay.

            “You already have a million dollars,” she said, pointing a half-eaten chicken strip at him. “You give twenties to nine-year-olds.”

            Jason opened his mouth to reply, then slowly shut it again. Damn. Kid had a point.

             Despite the darkness outside, Lian wanted to walk around the little town square they were in. As soon as they went outside, she started shivering, and Jason tried to give his jacket to her, but she patently refused, and ran off towards the fountain in the middle of the square. “Give me a penny!” she said, and he pawed through his wallet for change.

            “I only have a nickel-” he began, but she’d already flung it into the fountain, eyes closed. Then she whipped around, and grinned. “What did you wish for?” he asked.

            He didn’t expect her to tell him, but, to his surprise, she replied: “I wished…that you weren’t such a geek.” She laughed loudly, and then was off, running along the pathway.

            “Hey!” he called, and she stopped at the side of the road, waiting for him to cross with her. Despite her many demands, she never quite crossed the border of bratty, and Jay could see her father in her eyes, that unyielding, unrelenting determination. That, and something else, something more fluid, almost more dangerous. Jason wondered if that was any of her mother coming through.

             The streetlights illuminated the sidewalk, but most of the stores were already closed. Lian still shivered, and again he attempted to drape his own jacket over her shoulders, but she shook him off, looking genuinely angry for just half a second. He didn’t try again.

            When she found the mechanic’s, out of the square and around the corner, she grinned triumphantly at Jay, and said that they needed to come back tomorrow, for the tractor carburetor. “If you say so, kiddo,” said Jason, and then he followed her as she skipped all the way back to the old truck. Just as he reached her, though, her eyes lit up and she shot off in a different direction. “Hey!” he called, loudly, but she just waved her twenty dollar bill at him, grinning.

            “Ice cream!” she replied, heading towards the pretty ice cream parlor. With a long-suffering sigh, wondering how Roy did it, he followed her, trudging towards the old-fashioned building.

            Lian waited for him at the door of the place – he thought how she seemed a little like a puppy, always dutifully waiting for him to catch up before she ran ahead again – and he opened the door for her. She swept in, flashing a little smile at him.

            It was clearly a cute little family-run place, and Lian directed a nice older-looking woman precisely what kind of ice cream she wanted, and then gave Jay a very serious punch on the arm with her little fist when he claimed he didn’t want any. “What’s your favorite flavor?” she asked, peering down at the flavors behind the glass.

            He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Vanilla.”

            She looked at him derisively. “Vanilla?”

            “Cherry,” he added. “Cherry vanilla.”

            She turned back to the ice cream. “Black forest cherry, please. Three scoops, in one of those waffley cones.”

            “L- Donna-” he began, but she just shook her head, then scurried over to the register, Jay just behind her. There, a young girl, maybe a few years older than Lian, smiled brightly at them, purple braces lining her teeth.

            Jason saw how Lian seemed to shrink, suddenly become small and quiet. She placed the twenty dollar bill on the counter, and then slunk away – to Jay’s surprise, she took his hand, curling around his leg shyly. He took the change from the girl, and she smiled kindly at Lian as he took their ice cream.

            She took hers from him and scurried over to one of the high tables in the corner, hoisting herself up on the seat. When she’d taken the first few licks of her ice cream, he watched her, and asked, “So?”

            She looked at him. “So?”

            “What was that?”

            “What?”

            He nodded towards the girl at the register, who was talking to the woman who’d served them ice cream, a broad grin on her face. “You know her?”

            Lian didn’t reply immediately, licking at her chocolate ice cream. And then she said, “No.”

            “Why you so scared of her?”

            “I’m not scared,” she said quickly, loudly, and dangerously.

            Jay raised his hand slightly, motioning to her, _Settle down_. She eyed him for another moment, then slumped over slightly, poking her ice cream with a spoon.

            “You look miserable,” he said. “Nobody should ever look that miserable when they have ice cream in front of them.”

            She didn’t say anything. It was a whole fifteen minutes before Lian spoke up again, sliding off the chair and saying, “Let’s go.”

            Jay popped the rest of cone, covered in melting ice cream, into his mouth, and they headed back to the car.

            She was quiet on the car ride home. It was a different kind of quiet than it had been for the past few days; it was tense, deliberate, and he got the feeling that she had something to say but didn’t _want_ to talk, instead of having no interest in him whatsoever, like before.

            “Hey, kiddo,” he said, glancing over at her (it occurred to him, for the first time, was she even allowed to sit in the front seat?). “What’s up?”

            “Nothing,” she said, looking out the window.

            There was a shorter silence.

            Then she said, simply, “That girl was pretty.”

            Taken aback, Jay replied, “Sure. She was.”

            “Do you think she’d like me?”

            “I dunno. Maybe if you hadn’t been hiding behind me the whole time, you could’ve told her your name.” She didn’t reply, but she leaned her head against the window, staring in front of her – but Jay got the impression she wasn’t seeing beyond the windshield.

            “Jason,” she said, then she glanced at him. “ _Miles_.” A small attempt at a smile. “Do you like girls?”

            “Sure,” replied Jay. “You’re a little young for me, sweetheart, if that’s what you’re-”

            “No!” she said, making a face. “I mean, do you think it’s OK if… _everybody_ liked girls.”

            He shot her a look, confused. “What do you mean?” But even as he said it, the look on her face betrayed what she was thinking. “Oh,” he said, and then he could not believe he hadn’t caught on the moment he’d seen how shy Lian had been. Or, no – way back in the old garage, the look on her face when she’d told him that boys are gross. That should’ve been enough. “Oh, no, yeah,” he said. “Of course. Girls are great. I wouldn’t be surprised if you liked them too, because they’re pretty, and nice, and. Yeah.”

            He’d wished Roy had been there before, but this was the first time he really, intensely felt that the man should be here – this time not to relieve Jason, but to be there for Lian, who needed her father more than anything. Jay was so woefully unequipped for this.

            “Hey,” he said. “I think we made a really good brother and sister today, kid.”

            “Cousins,” she corrected. “You don’t look like my brother.”

            “Cousins, OK. I can deal with that. But when I see your dad again, you’re gonna get in trouble for being _Donna_ and not _Jade_.”

            “Donna’s gonna like it, though,” said Lian. “And she’s more important.”

            Jay laughed slightly, and then turned off the road, to the back of the house. “Call me Jay,” he said, stopping the car, turning off the engine. “My friends do.”

            “I’m not your friend,” said Lian, sliding out of the truck, closing the door behind her. As they headed into the house, she continued, “I’m your pretend-cousin.”

            “Pretend-cousin,” he echoed, locking the door behind them. “I can deal with that. Still family, right?”

            Watching him, leaning against the kitchen counter, she said: “Pretend family.”

            “That’s not so bad,” he said, with a shrug. “That’s all I ever had, anyway. Go get ready for bed.”

            She gazed at him for a moment, her dark eyes acutely aware, and then she turned around and went to her room, closing the door behind her. Like every night so far, he stood by the door, knowing she’d open it before she went to bed, waiting for confirmation that she was still in there, and she was safe.

            When she opened the door, she was in her PJs, a Powerpuff Girls onesie. She hung on the doorknob, looking up at him. Then she asked, “Why are you so sad?”

            He blinked at her. “I’m not sad,” he said.

            “You’re sadder than I am,” she said. “I can tell.”

            “No, you can’t,” he told her, nodding past her, into the room. “Go to bed.”

            “I hope Daddy didn’t pick you because he thinks I’ll make you happy,” she said, shaking her head. “Because I don’t care about boys at all, except for Daddy.”

            “That’s good,” he said. “Because I don’t care about little girls who spend my money on their ice cream.”

            “ _My_ money,” she replied, getting into bed. “And I bought you ice cream too.”

            He stood by the door. “You want me to tuck you in?” he asked.

            “No,” she replied. “Only Daddy does it right.”

            There was a short silence. He didn’t move from her door.

            Then she said, “But you could try, I guess.”

            It was then that it occurred to Jay that he had no idea how to tuck a kid in to bed, but he awkwardly lumbered forward anyway. She was so small, dwarfed in the huge bed, and so fragile. He wondered how Roy survived, living a life where, every day, he was responsible for this tiny, so very breakable child. He wondered how Roy had managed to go more than a week now without seeing her.

            Gently, he tucked the covers underneath her little body. “All right?” he asked. “Is that how your dad does it?”

            “No,” replied Lian. “But it’s OK.”

            “Good,” he said. He straightened up. Her eyes were already closed, and she curled up, totally defeating the purpose of tucking her in in the first place. “’Night, Lian.”

            “G’night Daddy,” she said, and it wasn’t a second later that she said, “Jason. I mean goodnight Jason.” She glanced up at him, and even in the darkness he could see the look on her face, the little resentment there. “You’re not my daddy,” she sighed, and settled into bed, eyes closed.

            Jay didn’t say anything. He reached out as if to brush his fingers gently through her hair, but then he took his hand away, and he turned and left the room, leaving the door half-closed, as always.

            He stood by the door for a very long time, a place in his chest feeling somehow very warm, and very, very empty.


	3. Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jay's bonfire is unsuccessful; he meets a librarian, and there's a thunderstorm on the way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to the Outsiders arc where Lian gets kidnapped.

            Jay groaned, wiping at fake tears in his eyes. “It is so nice,” he said, holding his BLT before him, “to eat sandwiches that have more than peanut butter and jelly in them.”

            “Jay,” whined Lian, at the side of the house. “Help me!”

            Dutifully, he put his sandwich aside, dusted off his hands, and went to where Lian was trying, unsuccessfully, to turn the water on to the hose. With one big wrench, the sound of water streaming into the hose began, and Lian nearly shrieked with pleasure, running back to where the sprinklers were placed in the middle of the lawn. Water arced into the air, falling down on Lian as she frolicked in it, laughing. “Don’t you want to play too?” she called to Jay, leaning over the water’s spray. “It’s so hot!”

            “I’m OK,” he replied, holding up his icy Diet Coke. He’d almost bought a six pack of cold ones when they were at the grocery store in town, but then he'd decided against it.

            She skipped around in the water for a while, with seemingly endless energy. Like before, they still didn’t talk a lot, but it was more natural now, easier on the both of them. She hummed a little, as she played – some Taylor Swift song, probably, as she’d been playing two of her albums nonstop for the past week.

            He focused on his excellent BLT, and then he glanced up, fondly watching her romp around the sprinklers, like any kid her age should. He tried to imagine Damian – Damian, who couldn’t be more than, what, a year older than her? – doing the same, running around in shorts and laughing in the summer sun. He couldn’t even picture it.

            The light reflected off the water on her back, and he narrowed his eyes slightly, thinking he must be seeing things. Even as he watched, it didn’t disappear like a trick of the light, and he called, “Lian.”

            She turned around to look at him, beaming. Her smile faded slightly when she saw the look on his face. “What?” she asked, with dread in her voice.

            “What’s that on your back?” he asked. “Is that a birthmark, or something?”

            Instantly she put her hands to her back, covering up the spot just above the line of her bathing suit bottoms, only barely exposed under the hem of the suit’s tee. “No,” she said. “What is?”

            “On your back,” he said. “Turn around.”

            “No,” she said.

            He just watched her for a little bit. She didn’t move, letting the water drip onto her. “Do you want me to turn off the water?” he said.

            “No,” she replied.

            “Are you sure you can’t show me again?”

            Lian was silent for a while. And then she said: “Daddy says I’m gonna get it covered up with tattoos one day. If I want.”

            It felt like something clipped his heart, hit him deep inside, dropping into his stomach. He knew that mark, branded on little girls’ skin, a few triangles that meant ownership, possession. He knew the gang it belonged to – now pretty much defunct, after its original leader was taken down – and he knew the kinds of things they trafficked.

            He asked, “When’d you get that?”

            “A while ago,” she responded, with no hesitation. “It doesn’t hurt.” When he looked at her, she added, “It used to.”

            He just watched her.

            “They kidnapped me,” she said. “It was really scary. I was really brave, though.”

            She went over to the side of the house and turned off the water, then went to sit on the steps with him, leaning her chin on her hands.

            “I was just kidnapped,” she said, and her voice was a little quieter now. “They put the thing on my back and then they tried to put me in an airplane. That’s all. Daddy kept asking me if they did anything else to me, and they didn’t.”

            Jay couldn’t think of anything to say. He tried, quietly, “He just wants to make sure you were completely safe-”

            “I got _kidnapped_ , I wasn’t _safe_ ,” she told him. “My nanny got shot, right there.” She held her index finger up to her head and mimed a shotgun blast, complete with a gentle sound effect. “I know what my daddy thinks happened to me. He got a doctor to talk to me, and Dinah did too, and Mia. I just got kidnapped. That’s it.”

            She stood up and looked at Jay, placing her hands on her hips.

            “I was brave,” she said. “You know when it’s a really scary place, but you can still be brave? That was what I did.”

            Defiantly, she stood there and met his gaze, as if daring him to say more. Finally, he asked, “What are you going to tattoo there?”

            With a shrug, she answered, “I don’t know. Maybe something about Daddy.”

            “Flowers are nice,” commented Jay.

            “I like your flowers,” she said. “They’re pretty.”

            “Thank you,” he said.

            She’d seen the poppy flowers tattooed across his back when he’d been chopping up the wood, shirtless. It was easy to forget about them, especially when she hadn’t mentioned it until now. Bruce had had a strict no body modification rule when he’d been Robin, because any unusual marking was too noticeable. But when he came out of that Pit, he’d been covered with these awful, ugly scars, all across his body – ghostly reminders of the burning, exploding fire which had consumed him, in his last hours before death and rebirth. It was then that he’d decided he was going to do what he wanted, and not Bruce, or Talia, or anyone. So he’d made a split-second decision on a trip to the Czech Republic (and, yeah, maybe he’d been a little drunk) and gotten that watercolor vine of poppies curling up his back. Certainly it wasn’t the tattoo one would expect on a hardened drug lord-slash-criminal, but every now and then, when he caught a glance of it in the mirror, he was reminded that he had it, and that he liked it. Somehow it represented far more than a poorly thought out decision in Prague (he’d made plenty of other more serious bad decisions there, anyway). The red-pink poppies were like a label, or a claim on his body: this is mine. Mine to damage, to break, to drown, to burn. Mine to do whatever I want.

            (He thought, for one second, about hands that he’d only allowed to touch him because he liked who that face looked like, placing flat palms on the colors staining his back, and then he didn’t think about that, because it was too close, and it made him sick to his stomach.)

            Lian still stood there, except the look in her eyes was kinder now, more Roy than whom Jay could only assume must be Chesh. “They don’t cover all your scars, though,” she said, and it seemed, somehow, like a relief that she would say it so bluntly. “So what _are_ you covering?”

            He shook his head. “You don’t always get tattoos to cover something up,” he answered.

            “I know,” she replied. “Daddy has his Navajo tattoo.” She held up her arm and placed one hand on her right bicep, very Rosie the Riveter. “And he has my name, right there.” She pointed to a spot just below her collarbone, just above her heart. “ _Etai Yazi_. But people don’t see that a lot.”

            “What kind of tattoos do you want?”

            “Lots,” she said. “Maybe one day I’ll get a flower, for you.” She grinned at him, and then said, “Are you _sure_ you don’t want to play in the sprinklers with me?”

            He considered this for a second, then shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Way too hot today, anyway.”

            It was strange to Jason to see how easily Lian could slip into acting like what any other nine-year-old would act like. Jay couldn’t remember exactly where he had been at nine – or part of him thought that he did, but he couldn’t get past trying _not_ to think about it – but he knew for sure it wasn’t cavorting around a sprinkler at an old farmhouse. The moment he thought this, he wondered what it was he felt: bitterness? Resentment?

            Lian laughed loudly, slipping on the wet grass and falling into a puddle of mud. No. He loved every second of this, and every tiny smile she gave. (Is this, he thought, what Roy feels, all the time?)

            Eventually, they got bored with it, and lounged out on the porch again in the warm sun. When evening approached, and she started to shiver a little bit, he got that crocheted quilt from the couch and brought it out, to wrap around her.

            “Hey,” he said. “We got hot dogs, and marshmallows. You wanna build a bonfire?”

            “Yes,” she said, immediately. “Where?”

            He glanced out at the lawn, and gestured to it vaguely. “Well. Here.”

            She looked up at him blankly.

            “Haven’t you ever made a campfire before?” he asked. “Plus the grass is wet anyway, it’ll be fine.”

            An hour later, Jay excused himself from a conversation with two older firemen, who kept valiantly attempting not to roll their eyes at him, and turned to Lian.

            “OK, so,” he said, “turns out, contrary to all common sense, wet hay is highly flammable.”

            “I can’t believe,” said Lian slowly, wisely, “that I didn’t get _any_ s’mores.”

            “I can’t believe,” replied Jay, glancing around at the busy property, “that the _entire_ fu- freaking town had to come out to see our asses on fire.”

            With a little sigh, Lian said: “Double swear jar.”

            “No!” She just glanced up at him, that wonderfully judgmental look on her face, clearly enjoying his protests. “I didn’t even say it!”

            “You meant to,” she said. “Still counts.”

            The blaze hadn’t been very large, but the plume of smoke and the arrival of what Jason suspected was literally the _only_ firetruck in the entire town had prompted a mass influx of random citizens, concerned for their wellbeing and also looking, it seemed, for some kind of strange neighborhood block party in light of what could have been a veritable flaming catastrophe.

            “Hello kids!” said an older woman, beaming brightly at them. “Are you two all right?”

            Jason didn’t recognize her immediately, but Lian said, “We’re OK, Judith!” and, oh, right, the lady from the diner. With a shy grin up towards Jay, she leaned into his leg and said, “Miles isn’t very good at campfires.”

            “I just wanted to give the little angel some roast marshmallows,” he said, knowing how flat and unconvincing he sounded, but unable to feign interest. It made him uncomfortable, to be around this many people in the place where he was supposed to be undercover. At least Lian was still pressed to his side; as long as she was this close, he thought, she was safe, and he was doing his job.

            “There’s camping grounds not ‘hour and a half away,” said Judith’s husband, a gruff-looking man with voice born of many years of cigarettes (Jay thought, shit, is that what I sound like?). “You should go for a weekend, it’s a beautiful place.”

            “You could borrow a tent,” added Judith helpfully, “if you don’t have one.”

            “OK,” said Jay. “Donna, what do you think about camping?”

            “That sounds boring,” said Lian.

            Jay laughed uncertainly. “Awesome,” he said. “Well, thanks for coming out, seeing if we’re OK. Give a big thank you to, you know. Everyone.”

            “Of course, honey!” said the woman, nodding. “Good to see someone in this house again. Just try not to burn it down!” Wheezing old-people laughter. Jay scanned their surroundings with his peripheral vision, searching for an out. “I’ll bring a pie sometime!” Judith said, beaming. “Apple all right?”

            Most of the people in the town had the same conversation with Jay and Lian, and it became clear after a while that they had shown up less out of interest in what could get their sole firetruck moving for the first time in years, and more because they’d all been desperate to meet the new kids in town. (Begrudgingly, Jay wanted to point out that the house wasn’t actually _in_ town, and that these people had to drive a good fifteen minutes out of their way to get there.)

            The firetruck eventually left, and people trickled away; it was very, very dark by the time Jay went to the porch and said, “Hey, kiddo. Time’s up.”

            Lian was practically glowing as she said goodbye to the ice cream girl, who grinned back at her, bright purple braces on her teeth. Out of all the people Jay had met that day, the girl’s family had been the least terrible; that old-fashioned ice cream parlor had been there for almost a century now, and their family had been running it for years. And, he had to admit, it was damn good ice cream.

            As they drove away, Jason glanced at the girl beside him, and then nudged her.

            “So?” he asked.

            Lian didn’t say anything for a moment, and then she glanced up at him slyly. “Her name’s Maya,” she said, turning around and heading back into the house. “She likes Princess Bubblegum too.”

            “You should invite her over for dinner sometime,” said Jay, following her into the house. “Maybe we’ll try mac and cheese again.”

            “And bring the fire department out here _again?_ ”

            “I don’t burn _everything_.”

            She sniffed slightly, too happy to sell the whole derisive attitude. “Most things, anyway.”

            He laughed, and reached out to lead her towards her bedroom, about to point out the time, when she suddenly froze, color leaching from her face.

            Seizing his hand, she wrenched him down to her level; before he could say anything, ask her what was wrong, she leaned up to his ear and whispered: “There’s someone outside.”

            Instantly, all his gentle pleasure from the past hours leaked away, and he knelt down, reaching down for the gun he always kept at his belt. It was then that he remembered he’d removed it, not wanting any awkward questions around all those people. “Stay down,” he whispered, and he took her hand and got to his feet, staying in a crouch. He took her into his bedroom, where the big duffel bag was hidden under the bed; he extracted three guns, placing them on the bed and loading them. “Just one?” he whispered to her, hands expertly handling the guns.

            “I don’t know,” she whispered back. “I saw somebody at the window, I didn’t see his face.”

            “A man?”

            “I think so.”

            “Not somebody from the town?”

            “I didn’t recognize him. I didn’t see his face. I don’t know.”

            Despite the desperate nature of her words, her voice wasn’t shaking, and she watched him determinedly. Once he was finished with the guns, he stuck two in the waistband of his pants, offered one hand to Lian, and held the other gun in the hand she wasn’t clutching onto. “I’m gonna take a look outside,” he said. “You’re gonna need to stay in here.”

            “No!” she said, quickly. “I’ll come with you!”

            “You’re staying right here,” he repeated. “I’m not about to put you in danger.”

            “So you’re leaving me _alone?_ ”

            “This house,” he said carefully, very clearly, “is bulletproof. Nobody’s getting in. But I gotta see who these guys are, make sure they won’t cause any trouble for us. Or for your dad.”

            She looked at him, shielding her fear with a look of determination and almost anger.

            “Lian,” he said, taking his hand away from hers to hold onto her shoulder, and staring her hard in the eye. He held the gun – the smallest one he owned – out in front of her. “You said you know how to shoot a gun?”

            She stared at him, gaped, then nodded.

            “You know how to shoot this?” he asked.

            She looked down at the gun, and held up her hands, and nodded.

            “I don’t want you to shoot this,” he said, letting her take hold of it, “but if you need to, aim for the knees, the crotch, or the shoulder. OK?”

            “Don’t leave me alone,” she said.

            “Just for a couple minutes,” he said. “You’re OK, you won’t have to shoot it. I promise. Be careful with it.” She watched him, and then her expression changed, hardened.

            “I know,” she said gruffly, almost indignantly.

            “Don’t open the door, except for me.”

            “I _know_ ,” she said. “They’re gonna get away if you don’t go.”

            He looked at her, nodded, and gripped her arms. “Don’t shoot yourself on accident,” he said. “I am _not_ gonna be telling your daddy you died on my watch.”

            And then he stood up and headed out of the room, instructing her to lock it behind him. Slowly, he moved through the house. He checked every room thoroughly, and once he was certain the house was clean, he moved to the front door, then slipped out onto the porch. It was dark, and the chirping and crickets and the rustling of the wind through the trees lit up the warm night. It was a wet kind of heat; it would rain soon, he thought, summer thunderstorms to moisten the burnt-out lawn.

            Slowly, he tip-toed around the corner of the house. Stars blinked above him, the milky way faintly visible in the night sky, so removed from any big cities. Gotham skies always looked inky, silky black. Jason did not look up at the sky.

            The ugly heat of the night pressed against him, and each beat of his heart seemed to slow, pumping through his body. There were people here, and they might have guns, and they might be trying to hurt the little girl he’d left with a gun in her hands in the house. Jason was more scared than he had been in a long time, but he didn’t stop to think long enough to realize that. He crept along the edge of the house, the white trim and hanging flowers out-of-place in the intensity of the moment. The truck; the garage, door still closed. For one moment, he stood stock-still at the edge of the back of the house, and then he shot forward, arms outstretched, gun held up and out, and – nothing.

            He circled the house again, then went to the garage, opened the door, and checked all the corners. Nothing.

            He went back out to stand in the backyard of the big blue farmhouse, gun in hand, one in his belt. He looked around him.

            There was a faint rustling in the trees. Immediately he held the gun up again, and slowly advanced on the trees.

            “Who are you?” he said out loud.

            There was no reply.

            Another shake of the brush; he tensed, finger already squeezing the trigger, and then there was movement – he prepared himself, and then-

            A bunny rabbit hopped out of the bushes near the ground, nose twitching.

            Jay watched it for a few moments, gun still raised, and then he dropped his arms with a little sigh.

            When Lian let him back in (“How do I know it’s you?” “Can’t you hear my voice?” “Maybe you’re just really good at faking voices.” “Dammit, Lian. I mean, darn it. Twenty dollars for the swear jar. Sorry.”), he took the gun out of her hands and she asked, “So? Did you shoot anyone?”

            “Did you hear any shots?” he asked, removing the clip from the gun, shoving it unceremoniously back into his bag.

            “No,” she replied. “Who was it?”

            “A bunny,” he said. She gave him a look, and he said, “I’m serious. There was a cute little cottontail bunny rabbit. You should be glad for it.”

            “I _saw_ someone,” she insisted.

            “Maybe you did,” he said, shoving the duffel bag under the bed again, then turning to look at her. “But I didn’t find anything. And this place has killer security, so I promise, when you go to bed tonight, you’ll wake up in the morning safe and sound.”

            It was an open accusation when she narrowed her eyes at him and said: “You don’t know that.”

            “I do,” he retorted. “I’ll sit outside your room with my Bushmaster all night, waiting for someone who thinks they can take me.”

            “I could take you,” she said.

            “ _Nobody_ could take me,” he told her, shaking his head. “Not alive.”

            For one single moment, she didn’t move, her eyes fixed on him, full of worry. Then she said: “There’s a chair in my room. You should stay in there, just to make sure I’m safe.” She paused, then added, “If you’re sleepy, you can go to sleep in my bed and wake me up and I’ll keep watch and make sure you’re safe too.”

            He did not realize its significance at the time – he only thought of what a baby she was, a child who needed to be loved and cradled and taught well, not have a gun shoved into her hands – but later, Jason would look back on that single sentence Lian had so bravely uttered, and he would realize that this was the first time since before his death that someone had indicated that they cared about his safety, that someone had acknowledged he was worth protecting.

            Lian slept through the night, and Jason hardly slept at all. He sat in her bed, under no covers, holding a gun in his lap, and watching her tiny body curled up under the blankets, listening to her whispering snores.

            The next day, in town, they finally made it back to that mechanic’s she’d been so desperate to get to. While Jay inspected the rows of machinery on the shelves, Lian detailed precisely what she wanted to the owner of the shop. “That’s mighty expensive, little lady,” he said, and Lian called Jay over, and Jay assured him that any expenses would be completely covered. They placed the order for what they didn’t have in-store, and Lian and Jay walked out of there carrying a bag full of the nuts and bolts they needed to start repairing the tractor.

            “I can’t believe,” she said, later that day, when they were in the garage eating oven-baked chicken nuggets and French fries, “that you were going to let me shoot a gun, alone.”

            Jay shrugged. “Sometimes you need to shoot people.”

            “My daddy would never let me shoot somebody.”

            “Someday you will.”

            She watched him, as if he was a puzzle, a delicate thing she did not understand. “Why do you have so many guns?” she asked.

            “Because,” he said, “I need a lot of bullets.”

            “What for?”

            “To do my job.”

            “But you’re a superhero.”

            “Debatable.”

            “Superheroes don’t use guns.”

            “Superman doesn’t use guns,” he said. “But if I could fly and had laser vision, I wouldn’t either.”

            “Batman doesn’t use guns,” she countered. “Neither does Grampa Ollie.”

            “Oliver Queen uses trick arrows,” he replied sagely, “because he still thinks it’s 1985. Batman uses guns all the time, he just throws a bat-symbol on there and calls them nonlethal.”

            “Daddy doesn’t,” she said.

            “Daddy used to,” he corrected. “His name was Arsenal for a long time. Arsenal. Implies a lot more than bows and arrows. Bows and arrows are boring, anyway.”

            “Not true,” she protested. “I’m on the archery team at school.”

            He eyed her. “What grade are you in?”

            “I’m gonna be fourth grader in September,” she said. “So I better be home by then.”

            “Hey,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “Don’t look at me. It’s your dad who has to finish the thing.”

            She munched on a chicken nugget, and then she asked, “Is Daddy OK?”

            “I’m sure he’s fine,” Jay told her. “He’s taken worse hits than this before.”

            “Why hasn’t he called?”

            So far, Dick had called once, and Ollie and Dinah had as well. Even standing in the kitchen while Lian had the secure phone held up to her ear, Jay had been able to hear Oliver Queen’s open weeping, and he’d seen the little, loving smile on Lian’s face. “He can’t call,” said Jason. “He’s undercover, and he’s pretending you’re dead. If he calls all of the sudden, then everybody knows you’re not dead.”

            “Can’t he just stop being undercover for a couple minutes?” she asked. “And call?”

            He wanted to lean forward and ruffle her hair or something, give her some form of reassuring touch, but he didn’t. “You’ll see him soon,” he said. “I promise.”

            This was not the last time she asked him this. Mia called not long after that, and she’d carefully tried to tell Lian that her father might look a little different when she sees him again, but that he’s OK, he’ll just look a little more like Uncle Vic – she had been out of the control the whole rest of the night, the worst she’d ever been for Jason, throwing the phone, shouting at him, storming around like a nine-year-old tornado. It was funny to him, he thought, that the emotion she was best equipped to show to express her feelings was pure, genuine fury. His best and oldest companion.

            Lian was sullen, now. It was coming up on the end of their first month together, and she had a Cartoon Network calendar taped up in the living room, and she was marking off the days. “One month,” she said, loudly, obnoxiously. “Donna should be back for me any day now.”

            “Dick said it might take a little longer,” Jay said. “More time to get to know your ice cream friend, right?”

            “Her name’s _Maya_ ,” she said stubbornly. “And she’s in sixth grade. She doesn’t want to hang out with me.”

            “Damn shame,” he said, and she didn’t even mention the swear jar.

            To get her mind off going home, they went into town. The parts had arrived at the mechanic’s, but Lian inspected them first, and turned out one of the pieces was wrong. She insisted that she wouldn’t take anything until it was all fixed, and they left in a stewing silence. They sat down at a bench by the fountain in the middle of square. Lian leaned forward, staring into the water.

            Jay didn’t know what to say to a moody child, so he sat there awkwardly, without saying anything. Clouds were gathering above them, the rain finally coming, heralding Lian’s own dark mood.

            “Do you want ice cream?” he asked.

            “No,” she said.

            More silence.

            Then she sat back, placing her head against his arm, leaning into him. “I finished my book,” she said.

            “I’ll tell Dick to bring you some new ones,” he told her. “He said he’s probably going to visit soon. I don’t know when. He’s kind of busy. Maybe he’ll bring our little brother. He’s your age. A pain in the ass, but your age.”

            She stared at the fountain. “Swear jar,” she said.

            “There we go,” he sighed. “I thought I was going to have to resort to swearing like a sailor to get you up and at it again.”

            She sat up, and looked at him. “Let’s go to the library,” she said.

            Jay hadn’t known there was a library in town, and he didn’t know how Lian knew exactly where it was, but she did, and she brought him right there. After she had collected a stack a foot high of Magic Treehouse and Babysitter’s Club paperbacks, she settled in at one of the desks, her eyes flying across the page. Making sure to keep her within sight, Jay slipped into the aisles, preferring to be hidden by rows of books than sitting out in the open with her. He didn’t really look at the books, letting his eyes slide over the titles as he contemplated what a strange place he was at, so far from Gotham, with a little, angry girl he barely knew under his care.

            “Looking for something?”

            He whipped around, alarmed at the voice so close; but it was only a young man, his age or maybe a little younger, grinning at him through thick square glasses. He had a little tag on his shirt which said _HI! I’M ROBERT_ with a smiley face, and another sticker that said, _ASK ME ABOUT OUR SUMMER READING PROGRAM_.

            “No,” answered Jay, shaking his head, looking at the books. “No, no. I’m just.” He paused. “Just. Here for the little girl, I guess.”

            Robert glanced beyond Jay, where Lian was sitting engrossed in her book. He raised an eyebrow.

            “I mean,” said Jason, “she’s my little sister. My cousin. She’s my cousin, but she’s like a little sister to me. I look after her.”

            The other man nodded. “Kids,” he said, probably trying to sound wise.

            This bothered Jason for some reason, so he raised an eyebrow. “You got any?” he asked.

            Robert laughed and said, “Oh, no, God no. But,” he pointed at the sticker on his shirt, “I work with them a lot.”

            Nodding at the sticker, Jay asked, “So what is the summer reading program?”

            He shrugged. “Kids read books, they get stickers,” he said. “Pretty straightforward. Maybe your little sister-cousin-daughter, or whatever, would be interested in it.”

            Jason nodded vaguely.

            After another second, the librarian held out his hand. “My name’s Rob,” he said.

            “I know,” said Jason pointedly, glancing at the nametag and shaking his hand politely. “I’m Miles. That’s Donna, over there.”

            “Hold on,” said Rob, a flitting smile on his face. “Are you the guy who lit his lawn on fire?”

            With a defeated sigh, Jason said, “I am that guy, yes. Did you come visit me, like the rest of the town?”

            “No,” laughed Rob. “But I heard. Don’t you know wet hay is-?”

            “I do now,” said Jay. “Thanks.”

            Neither of them said anything for a second, and then Rob began, “Are you sure I can’t help you find a book?”

            “Nah,” replied Jay. “I don’t really read.”

            Rob made a face, glancing at the rows of books around them. “If you join the summer reading program,” he said, “I’ll give you stickers.”

            “As utterly delightful as that sounds,” Jay replied, “I think I’ll pass. Thanks for the help.”

            He said this with finality, signaling an end to the conversation, and Rob caught on pretty quickly. “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “You’re welcome. Let me know if you need anything else.”

            He nodded; Jay nodded; he left. Not eager to be approached by another librarian, he went over to sit down with Lian.

            Without looking up from her book, Lian said mildly, “Are you making friends?”

            “No,” said Jay. “Do you care at all about getting stickers for reading books?”

            “That depends,” she replied. “What kind of stickers?”

            Jason laughed softly. “I like the way you think, Miss Haywood.”

            After another minute or so, Lian finally glanced up. “Here,” she said, handing him a book from her stack. “You can read this, so you’re not bored.”

            “No thanks,” he said.

            She held it out to him. “You’re in a library,” she said. “Read.”

            “That’s OK,” he said, sliding the book across the table back to her. “I don’t read.”

            “You can’t read?”

            “I _can_ read,” he replied. “I just don’t like it.”

            “It’s OK if you can’t,” she said. “I have friends who can’t read.”

            “You’re nine,” he told her. “And I just said, I definitely can read.”

            She watched him for a second, then shrugged, and went back to her book.

            By the time they left the library – sans books, because neither of them had a library card – the clouds overhead had turned gray and stormy. Lian didn’t look up at the sky, but hurried to the truck, getting in and closing the door behind her. When Jay got in as well, and started the car, she spoke up.

            “He liked you,” she said.

            “Who liked me?” asked Jay, backing out of the parking space.

            “The librarian. Do you know his name?”

            “Rob. Rob the librarian. I don’t think he liked me, it’s his job to be friendly and smile at people.”

            “He _likes_ you,” insisted Lian, and Jay didn’t argue. The girl obviously had feelings about same-sex ‘like’ ( _like_ -like, he thought), so he wasn’t going to shoot her down.

            As they headed out of down, rain began to drop from the sky, little more than a mist at first. They were halfway home, on the long road lined with fir trees, when the car started to sputter slightly.

            “What’s wrong?” asked Lian instantly, staring at Jay with wide eyes.

            “Nothing,” he murmured, glancing down at the dash. “Don’t worry about it.”

            A clap of thunder resounded above them, rolling, crackling energy. The car didn’t feel right, and Jay was wary about driving in this kind of weather. Beside him, Lian clutched the seat.

            “You OK, kiddo?” he asked.

            “Yes,” she said immediately, her voice weak.

            Another rolling clap of thunder; there was an audible _pop_ from the car, and Jay swore under his breath, feeling the machine desperate to veer right.

            When he stopped the car, Lian said urgently, “What are you doing-”

            “Hold on,” he said. “Let me check the tires.”

            As he went to open the door, she reached out, taking tight hold of his arm. “Wait,” she said.

            “It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll fix it and we’ll be on our way.”

            “ _Wait_ ,” she said.

            “Lian,” he replied, taking her hand. “Calm down. Just give me five seconds.”

            “It’s _raining_ ,” she said.

            “So I’ll get wet. It’s not the end of the world.”

            She met his gaze for a moment, and then she nodded, and let go of him.

            He stepped out of the car onto the side of the road, rain pelting down on them now. Grimacing, he knelt down, inspected the tires. The back right was in bad shape, popped, somehow, by the look of it. He ran his fingers along the harsh rubber tire, rivulets of water dripping down from the metal edge of the car, and then he froze. Not popped. Cut.

            As he climbed back into the truck, there was another roll of thunder, louder now. Lian didn’t even look up at him, eyes squeezed shut, hands pressed tightly over her ears. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said, reaching out to her, closing the door behind him. “Look at me. Look at me. It’s OK. Just thunder.”

            Very slowly, she opened her eyes, beginning to remove her hands. Just as she did so, everything around them lit up for a split second with a flash of yellow-white lightning, and Lian actually screamed, clapping her hands back over her face.

            “It’s OK!” repeated Jay, loudly. “Lian, come on. Look at me.” He reached out and took her by the wrists, tried to peel her hands away from her face. “It _can’t_ hurt you, it’s just a little thunder and lightning. It’s cool, see?”

            Tears leaked out her eyes, running down her face. Without a clue what to do, he reached out and unbuckled her, then tugged her little body across the seat divider to sit on his lap. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly.

            “You’re safe,” he said, speaking directly into her ear. “It’s just some weather. It can’t hurt you.”

            “I want to go _home_ ,” she cried.

            “I know you do,” he said. “But I can’t fix the car and help you at the same time.” She started to cry harder, and twisted, turning to bury her face in his chest. She mumbled something, but Jay couldn’t make it out.  “What?” he asked.

            She looked up at him. “Go fix it,” she said.

            “No,” he replied. “I’m gonna stay here with you.”

            With two little fists, she banged on his chest. “ _Fix_ it!”

            “No,” he said stubbornly. “I’m not gonna leave a scared kid by herself, not when you’re cryin’ your eyes out like this.”

            Another clap of thunder; he felt her shiver in his arms, but she looked at him, swallowed her tears, and said: “I’m not scared.”

            “Yes,” he said, “you are.”

            “I’m _brave_.”

            “You’re that too,” he said. “But you’re also scared. That’s OK.”

            She looked at him, staring into his eyes. “I saw someone kill my nanny,” she said. “I got kidnapped, and they hurt me. I’m supposed to be dead. I’ve been alone with _you_ this whole time, and, the other night, I saw someone outside our home. I’m _not_ scared. I’m _never_ scared. My daddy told me to be brave.”

            For a while, Jay just looked at her. And then he said, “Who are you being brave for?”

            “My daddy,” she replied.

            “Your daddy’s not here right now,” he said, holding her. “I am. And I’m telling you, you got no reason in the world to be brave, if you don’t want to be.”

            She watched him, tears still on her cheeks.

            “Fear is good,” he said. “Fear is power. Being afraid for yourself means you’re lookin’ out for yourself, which is the best possible thing you could do, ‘cause God knows one day you’ll close your eyes and realize that there’s nobody lookin’ out for your ass but yourself.”

            He smiled at her, sadly.

            “A wounded animal’s the most dangerous kind,” he said. “Because they’re terrified. And that means they won’t go down without a fight. Unless they do,” he added, and she couldn’t know what the bitter spark in his eye mean, “but even then…they don’t stay down for long.”

            This time, he grinned. Thunder rolled above them, but her shaking had stopped.

            She lowered her face back to his chest, and collapsed onto him, limbs going loose.

            Voice high and fragile, she murmured: “I miss my dad.”

            Jay didn’t answer, just rubbed his hand up and down her back gently.

            Another flash of lightning, but her eyes were closed, face pressed into his chest. It was a few more minutes before the thunder seemed to pass them by, moving on to wherever thunder went.

            “Damn,” he said, gently lifting her up, moving her to sit sideways on his lap. “You know, it would’ve been kinda helpful if you’d gotten those parts from the mechanic. Car’s all busted up.” She didn’t say anything. Then he opened the door, and she climbed off his lap, back into the other seat.

            “Jay,” she said, as he got out.

            Looking up at her, eyes wide and full of poorly concealed concern, he said: “Yeah?”

            The little girl held out her hand. “Swear jar,” she said. “Twice.”

            He stared at her for a second, and then he smiled.

            After another twenty minutes of attempting to get the car up and running again, the rain lessened, and Lian pointed out that they could almost see the house from where they were. They ended up walking along the road together, heading back to the old farmhouse. It was actually raining harder than they’d thought, and they were soaked by the end of it, but Jason kept picking Lian up and swinging her high above the big puddles, so there was a big grin on her face when they finally got home.

            He started a bath for her, in the bathroom attached to her room, and then got cleaned up himself. While she bathed, he went out to the living room. Turned on the TV, flipped through some channels. He picked up one of the books Lian had left on the armchair, flipped through it, then tossed it behind him.

            After a few more minutes, the door of Lian’s room opened, and her little voice came through the house. “Jay,” she said.

            He turned around, and then went to her, bare feet padding on the hardwood floor. She was standing by her door, looking up at him, hanging on the doorknob.

            “Tuck me in?” she said.

            “Sure,” he replied, as she scurried over to her bed. “But last time you said I wasn’t good at it.”

            “I said it was OK,” she pointed out, jumping into bed, slipping under the covers. “Please please please. It’s bedtime.”

            “Fine,” said Jay, leaning over, tucking her in. “Don’t be so demanding.”

            “Thank you Jay,” she said, smiling, snuggling into the covers, undoing the tuck he just gave her. “You know,” she sighed, eyes fluttering shut, “you make a good pretend-daddy.”

            “Thanks,” he said. “You’re a bratty little pretend-daughter.” She giggled, and he said, “Goodnight, Lian,” and left.

            It took him a while to get to sleep. He kept thinking of her eyes in the truck, the way he wouldn’t have known that look in her eyes was fear, because he’d seen it many times before in the past month but hadn’t known what to call it. She was a baby, sure, but she was so much more than that, too.

            Just as he was drifting to sleep, there was a high-pitching vibrating noise. He jerked awake, eyes wide, staring at the bedside table, where the small black communicator Donna had left with him rang.

            Immediately he picked it up, hoping the ringing hadn’t woken Lian. “Yeah,” he said, sitting up in bed, eyes partly closed, unsure what he was about to hear.

            Although he hadn’t known what exactly to expect, violent sobs hadn’t even been on the radar.

            “Hello?” he asked, slipping his legs out of bed. “Who is this?”

            “J-Jay – _Jason_ -”

            Jay sat there, staring into the dark. “Roy?” he asked, cautiously.

            “ _Jason_ ,” came Roy’s voice, hoarse and not-quite-right, although Jay couldn’t tell, at first, what was different. “Jay. Jay, let me talk to her.”

            “What happened?” he asked, a shot of fear pulsing down his spine.

            “Let me – give me my _baby_ , Jay, I just-”

            The rest of his plea was unintelligible, slurring out of his mouth so badly that Jason couldn’t understand him, over the phone. It was at that moment that Jay realized what was happening, and he closed his eyes, the fear-pumped adrenalin in his body calming, coalescing and hardening in an ache in his heart.

            “No,” said Jay, softly.

            There was a rough, low moan on the other line.

            “Roy,” he said. The other man didn’t answer, but Jay could imagine him, alone, in pain, unable to see an end. Gently – kindly, he would hope, but he had no frame of reference for kindness anymore, so he didn’t know – he said: “You’re high.”

            “Let – let me _speak_ to her-”

            “No.”

            “You’re – she’s my – she’s my _girl_ -”

            “When you get sober,” said Jay, unyielding, “you’ll thank me for this.”

            Roy started to shout something, but Jason took the phone away from his ear and hung up, and he was alone in the silence and the dark.


	4. Domestic Disturbance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor and Mia visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole thing spans approximately the same time as The Return of Bruce Wayne/The Road Home/Batman and Robin #16 (shh, I'm fudging canon timelines a bit to make this work).

            “Lian, did you know,” Mia began, smiling up at Jason innocently, “one time Big Red here asked me to be his Robin?”

            “OK,” said Jay, rolling his eyes. “I didn’t ask you to be my _Robin_.”

            Holding onto Lian tightly, Mia smirked at him. “You literally said the words, _Be my sidekick_.”

            At Lian’s inquisitive gaze, Jason shrugged shortly. “It was a weird time for me,” he said.

            “I’ll be your sidekick,” said Lian happily, reaching out to hold hands with Connor, who was sitting on the couch facing towards her, smiling softly.

            “No sidekicks for me,” Jay replied. “I’d be bad luck for them anyway.”

            There was an odd silence, and Connor leaned forward, pressing his forehead to Lian’s. “I’m glad you’re OK,” he said gently.

            Mia glanced around, and Jay got the hint. “I’ll be right outside,” he said, and he headed out the door, to the rocking chair on the porch in the afternoon sun.

            It had been a tough month, and it was good for Lian to see some people she loved. He was glad for that. It hurt like fucking hell when Mia saw the little girl, and her face lit up, and she started crying a little bit, unselfconsciously. And when Connor had picked Lian up and swung her around, pride bursting in his eyes, but almost wordless.

            They’d known she wasn’t dead for some time, but Jay couldn’t imagine those first few weeks – Mia had been with her, had been responsible for her when the destruction hit Star City, and Dick, in a phone call, had sternly reminded Jason to be kind to her. Roy had been all too convincing at Lian’s fake funeral, he heard, and he’d hurt Mia, badly. He couldn’t imagine feeling responsible for a death like that. A child’s death. A child you loved.

            He felt sick to his stomach, thinking of Bruce.

            Dick dropped odd, small comments about Bruce when he called, and Jason didn’t want to hear them. If the man showed up out of the blue and took the cowl back from his eldest, favorite son, so be it. He wouldn’t be the first in the family to come back from the dead.

            The summer sun stopped just short of his feet, stretched out on the porch, protected by the overhang roof. There were still bunnies hopping around the edge of the woods, and birds chirping in trees, and bugs flying lazily in the summer air. _Why, the fuck_ , he thought, _would I ever go back to Gotham?_

            It hurt him, to think it; what hurt him more was how many times he’d thought it in the years he’d came back, and the fact that he’d never followed through. But then he thought that maybe this whole thing – maybe Roy coming to him, asking _him_ – was about more than the right guy to protect his daughter. Maybe he was offering Jay an out.

            Nah. That’d be too kind. He may be Jason Todd, the bad Robin, the kid who died and clawed his way out of his grave like a particularly handsome zombie, but he was also Red Hood, and there was no leaving that life. Talia would have given him a way out, if he’d wanted, but he hadn’t. Tommy would have given him another way out, maybe, but that would’ve left him cold and in the ground again, and he had no desire to go back there anytime soon.

            Gotham made him antsy. Bruce did, Talia did. Thinking about Tommy made him want to tear his own skin off and throw himself into the dirt and disappear like the trash he was. Almost unconsciously, his hand flitted to his pocket, searching for something that wasn’t there. He hadn’t smoked since getting here: that had been another of Roy’s requirements, and one that he had had no intention of breaking (except he had, a little bit, because he had a pack and a lighter in that duffel bag). If he needed a hit – and it wasn’t as if he needed a pack a day, or anything, he wasn’t there yet – he had nicotine patches, anyhow. Bruce used to give them to him, and then Tim after that. (Jay didn’t get along with Tim, but the kid gave a damn. That much he couldn’t deny.)

            But right now, he needed a fucking cigarette.

            He tapped his fingers along the old polished wood of the rocking chair, and soldiered through it.

            Jason didn’t know how long it had been when someone opened the door and stepped out onto the porch with him. He didn’t say anything to acknowledge the girl’s presence, only let her close the door and lean on it, following his gaze out at the lawn.

            “You know,” she began.

            “If one more joke about sidekicks comes outta your mouth,” he said mildly, “I’m gonna punch you in it.”

            Mia didn’t move, and then, suddenly, she laughed. It was an odd sputtering sound, as if she wanted to hold it back but couldn’t. “Don’t be such a grumpy butt,” she said, passing him to take a seat on the chair beside him. “I was going to say, for the Batfam’s bad seed, you sound like a really good babysitter.”

            He didn't glance up at her. “What did she say?”

            “That you’re a really good babysitter,” she replied, grinning at him. When he finally deigned to glance at her again, she said, “For real. She really likes you. Keeps saying hella nice things about you, at least.”

            “Did her dad send you?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously. “You supposed to make sure I’m treating her all right?”

            “No, Roy didn’t send me,” she said patiently. “I haven’t seen him for a while. But I hear he’s doing his job, which sucks for him, but also is the best we could hope for, I guess.” She paused, and he did not reply. “Ollie, on the other hand,” she continued, glancing out towards the lawn, “doesn’t trust you at all, and keeps threatening to show up and take her home. So we’ve been keeping your location a secret from him.”

            Jay said, “I could take Oliver Queen.”

            “Yeah, but,” said Mia, “nobody wants a Mexican standoff between Red Hood and Green Arrow while Lian sits on the porch and cries.”

            “I wouldn’t let her-”

            “You’re not a dad, are you?” she asked, narrowing her eyes slightly, leaning in towards him. “You seem like a dad. Like a Roy kind of dad.”

            He looked at her indignantly. And then he said, “No. Not that I know of, anyway.”

             “Too bad,” she said. “You’d be good at it.”

            They didn’t say anything. Mia rocked back and forth in her seat; Jay did not.

            Then, because he knew that if there were any silly superhero sidekicks out there he could ask this of, Mia was at the top of the list, he asked, “Hey, you wanna do me a favor?”

            “No,” she said cheerily. She grinned at him. “Depends, really.”

            “I don’t want to interrupt reunion bonding time with the babies,” he said, nodding towards the house. “But if you could just pop into my room and grab my cigarettes-”

            She flat-out laughed at him, throwing her head back, delighted. “You _smoke_? Of course you do. The whole bad-boy image wouldn’t be complete without it.”

            “Get ‘em or don’t,” he said. “This conversation don’t need to last much longer either way.”

            She watched him for a second. Then she got up and headed towards the door.

            “In the bag under the bed,” he told her, as she opened the screen door. “One of the pockets on the side.”

            Without even nodding, Mia headed into the house. Jason sat there for a few moments, and then she returned, closing the door behind her. “Connor’s trying to get her to meditate with her,” she said, handing the pack to Jay. “So be quick. She gets bored easy.”

            She sat back down, and held out her hand expectantly. He raised an eyebrow at her. “You serious?” he asked.

            “No, I’m Mia,” she said, then gestured impatiently with her fingers. After another moment, he tugged a cigarette out of the pack and passed it to her; tucking it between her lips, she lit it with the lighter she’d taken from his bag. Taking a deep drag, she passed the lighter to him.

            The first breath was like a release in the depth of his chest: warm, acrid, smoky. It never felt dangerous. More often than not, it felt like home.

            Jay glanced at her. “Why aren’t you in there with them?” he asked. “You thought she was dead for weeks.”

            “Well,” replied Mia evenly, “she’s not. Which is awesome. All that self-destructive guilt I was harboring turned out to be totally null and void. Thanks, Roy Harper.”

            Jason watched her. “You don’t like him?” he asked.

            It took her a moment, but then she gave a small, slow shrug. “I like Connor better,” she said, glancing at Jay. “But that’s only because we made out one time. And he’s _hella_ hot with a beard.”

            “Roy isn’t?”

            “Roy always styles his beard like Ollie,” she replied pointedly. “That’s gross.”

            Simultaneously, they inhaled deeply, the nicotine calming their nerves.

            Quietly, Jason asked, “You think she’s gonna be Speedy someday?”

            “Hope so,” Mia said, lowering her hand, tapping the ash onto the floor. “ _Speedy_ is a kid’s name. That’d be like being stuck as Robin forever.”

            Although he tried to, he couldn’t completely hold back a grin at that, sucking on his cigarette, looking up at the sky. “You wanna be Arsenal?”

            “No,” she replied. “She’ll be Arsenal, one day. Or her dad will go back to it.” She paused, and Jay didn’t know if she was going to continue. He almost spoke again, but then she said, her voice lower: “I’m going to be my own hero, someday.”

            There was a short silence. Jay let out a long breath, and then grunted, “Romantic.”

            “Thanks,” she said. “Maybe one day you’ll graduate to the big Bat, and she can be Red Hood.”

            “Fuckin’ hope not,” said Jay gruffly. “Not really a name for a cute kid.”

            “Well. She won’t be a cute kid forever.”

            “Nah. I don’t believe that.”

            They sat there for a while. Mia said: “Connor thinks Roy should’ve gotten him to do this.”

            Jay glanced at her. “Why didn’t he?”

            “When Roy gets back,” Mia sighed, “the answer he’ll give is that Connor couldn’t disappear for a few months, that he had other obligations, blah blah blah, et cetera, ad nauseam.” Blowing a puff of smoke out at Jay, she continued, “But the real reason is that Connor’s a pacifist, whereas you can and will shoot people.”

            He watched her, holding the cigarette between his fingers. “I don’t enjoy it,” he said.

            “Maybe you do,” she replied, shrugging. “Maybe you don’t. Doesn’t matter, if it’s necessary either way.”

            “You are not,” he said, “a very good sidekick.”

            “ _You_  aren't a good sidekick for Batman,” she countered. “I’m a _great_ sidekick for GA. The only reason he knows about all this is because he was literally going to go kill the guy responsible for her death. So what? Some people get killed, it’s the way of the world. Police do it.”

            “We’re not police,” he said.

            “A lot of us are better than a lot of them,” she said, watching him, as if carefully scanning for any emotion. “Why do you think we had to start doing what we do? The police weren’t doing their jobs in the first place, Jason. You know people say I’ve just been hanging out with Ollie too much, but I have my own reasons for not trusting the police, and for not believe that institutions and establishments can make the change we need.”

            Jay tucked the cigarette between his lips, and took a long drag. “Why us?” he asked.

            Mia shrugged. “I don’t know about you,” she told him, “but I wasn’t about to let the opportunity to be a _superhero_ pass me by.”

            They didn’t stay the night, although Lian wanted them to. Jay hardly talked to Connor, but he got the impression that he approved of this whole arrangement more than he didn’t, and for some reason that made him feel better. Lian didn’t cry when she said goodbye to them; or, she might have, but she really didn’t want anyone to say anything about it, so they didn’t.

            It was late when they left, and Lian was still on the couch, curled up in the corner. Jay flipped on the TV and made a bowl of popcorn, standing in front of the microwave until it beeped. When he went back to sit with her, he offered her the bowl and said, “They seem nice.”

            “I miss them,” she said.

            “They left ten minutes ago,” he replied.

            She didn’t say anything.

            They’d spent the past few days fixing up the truck, and they were just about prepared to venture back into town; it was getting even hotter, now that the rain had passed. Again, they went to the library. Glancing around casually, Jay didn’t see Rob the librarian anywhere, so he ended up parking it right next to Lian as she read. He flipped through her books without looking at the pages, bored but unsure what to do, surrounded by tomes he didn’t want to read.

            “Jay,” Lian said, without looking up.

            “Mhm,” he replied, glancing at her.

            She slid her book his way, and pointed at a word. “What does that mean?”

            Jay blinked at the paper, then looked at her. “Can you read it out to me?”

            “No,” she said. “O-nom-mato-poe-eeya.”

            He stared at her. “What?”

            “O-nom-mato-poe-eeya,” she replied, pressing her finger onto the page. “What does that mean?”

            “I don’t think you’re saying that right,” he said.

            “OK,” she said, impatiently. “How do you say it?”

            He looked at her, then down at the book.

            “O,” she said, pointing at the letters, “N-O-M-A-T-O-P-O-E-I-A.”

            “That doesn’t help me,” he said.

            “It’s right there,” she insisted, pointing at the word.

            “Hold on,” said Jay gruffly, and he took the book out of her hands, staring down at it. His lips moved slightly, brow furrowed, sounding it out.

            More in awe than shock, Lian gaped at him, and then she asked, her voice hushed: “Can you _read?_ ”

            “Yes,” he replied sharply.

            She plucked the book out of his hands, and shuffled back to the first page. Then she laid it out in front of him again, and pointed to the first word. “Read this,” she said smartly.

            With a slight glare her way, he took the book, and held it up.

            “ _Help_ ,” he read. “ _A_ _monster_.” He paused, reading the words, then said, “ _Said, Annie_.”

            He looked up at her, smugly.

            “Keep going,” she said.

            Jaw clenching slightly, he went back to the book. “ _Yeah_. _Sure_ ,” he read; as he did so, he focused so intently on the letters that Lian could see it on his face, see his eyes tracing the lines on the page. “ _A…real monster in Frog Creek, Pen… Penns_ …” he hesitated, struggling for a moment, and then the shoe dropped and he said, “ _Pennsylvania_ ,” very quickly, and lowered the book, and glowered at Lian. “Are you happy?” he asked.

            She took the book back from him. “Did you get tested,” she said.

            “What?” he asked.

            “Tested,” she repeated, looking at him. “In school.”

            He watched her. Then he said, “I haven’t been at school for a long time.”

            “You can’t read,” she informed him.

            “I _can_ read,” he replied, voice low, glancing around them. “I just showed you.”

            “You can’t read _right_ ,” she said, closing the book, looking up at him. “Like they teach you at school.”

            “Hey,” he said, begrudgingly trying not to feel too annoyed at the nine-year-old unintentionally antagonizing him. “What they teach you at school ain’t always right.”

            Defensively, she replied, “I _know_ that. Daddy tells me that.” She paused, eyeing him, then continued, “But you should go do a test. Maybe you’ve got dyslexica.”

            “Dyslexi _a_ ,” he corrected her.

            “Yeah,” she said. “That.” She went back to her book, and then added, “Maybe the librarian can help you.”

            “The librarian,” he repeated, doubtfully.

            “Bob,” she said.

            “Rob,” he corrected. “And no thanks.”

            “You should _talk_ to him,” insisted Lian. “He had a cute face, when he looked at you. That’s how you know somebody likes you, when their face is cute at you.”

            “Your face is cute,” he said, “all the time.”

            She rolled her eyes, as if this were a very basic concept. “But not,” she said, “ _at_ you.”

            After another few moments of defiant eye contact, Jay said, “OK. I’ll cut you a deal. When you talk to ice cream girl again, I’ll talk to Rob again.”

            “Deal,” she said. “Let’s go get ice cream.”

            They did; Lian got three scoops this time, because she was rolling in cash from the swear jar. She didn’t finish all of it and Jay gladly helped out. Eventually Lian went back to the counter to talk with Maya, the ice cream girl, and the older woman who was wiping down tables came over and chatted with Jay, asked him questions about his life. Jay told him about their grandmother, moved out to Keystone years ago (Keystone? Hadn’t it been Smallville, last time?), about how he was a mechanic, or a construction worker, something like that, worked with his hands. “Fine life choices, right there,” the older woman, Maya’s aunt, told him. “College ain’t for everyone. I tell that to my youngest brother, but no, he’s off studying numbers at art school in St. Louis.” She got a hard look in her eye and asked: “Patriots or Cougars?” and he almost panicked before realizing that she was talking about the Keystone-Central football rivalry. “You got a girlfriend back home, Mister Haywood?” Jay smiled and told her no, and she asked, “A boyfriend, hmm?” and he laughed and told her no, again, and she shrugged and said, “We take all kinds here, no judging, leave that to God,” and smiled back at him, kindly.

            Jay thought he’d constructed a pretty nice life for Miles Haywood.

            Lian said goodbye to Maya after a while, and they headed out of the ice cream shop. Jay started to head towards the car, but Lian grabbed him and pulled him across the square. “We’re not _done_ yet,” she said, heading towards the mechanics. “Those parts better be right this time!”

            They were, and Lian was content. Jay paid (in cash, which the owner didn’t even blink an eye at), and then they headed out of the store, Lian chatting cheerfully about what they had left to finish on the tractor back home. Just as they exited, Jay holding the big bag full of metal components, somebody called, “Hey!”

            Instantly, they both turned around, Lian’s talk coming to an abrupt halt. Without even glancing at her, he could sense the bright look of joy that lit up on her face as she saw who the voice belonged to.

            “Hey,” replied Jay, nodding at the man, hefting the mechanical parts in his arms. “It’s you again.”

            “Me again,” he said, then, with a grin, he added, “Rob. The librarian.”

            “Right,” said Jay. “I remember.”

            “Miles, right?”

            “That’s me.”

            Rob was wearing jeans and a tank top, and was wiping his hands on a greasy rag, covered with a sheen of sweat in the afternoon sun. He leaned down to talk to Lian. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Rob, I work at the library. I’ve seen you devouring our Magic Treehouse books.”

            “Yeah,” she said. “They’re OK.” Then she said, “I’m Donna, nice to meet you.”

            “Nice to meet you too,” he replied. “I’d shake your hand, but.” He held up the dirty rag.

            “Do you work here!” said Lian, smiling innocently up at him.

            Rob shrugged, straightening up and shooting a little grin at Jay. “Nah,” he replied. “My uncle owns the place, so I come play with cars sometimes. Cars and their engines.” He smiled broadly at Jay, who didn’t say anything. Without skipping a beat, Rob looked down at Lian again. “I hear you’re the little lady who had that very specific order,” he said to her. “What does a ten-year-old need a Marvel Schebler TSX 458 updraft carburetor for?”

            Lian seemed very, very pleased at this. “I’m nine,” she said. “And we’re trying to fix our tractor!”

            “Too much work,” he said, waving his hand. “Just get a new one, for all the cost of replacement parts.”

            “She likes putting it back together,” said Jay.

            Rob’s eyes slipped back up to him, and he nodded wisely. “Ah,” he said. “I get that.”

            There was an awkward sort of pause, but Rob was definitely lingering, and Jay could practically feel Lian pushing him towards the other man. Finally, more out of defeat than real interest, he said, “Hey, so. Been having a little trouble with our truck, it totally cut out on us in the rain, we need some new tires, the whole nine yards.”

            At once, Rob leapt for the opportunity. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “You get all kinds of trouble with those old models when it’s really raining.” He hesitated, then added, “I could take a look at it, if you wanted.”

            “Sure,” said Jay, nodding. “I mean. Could short out on us whenever, and that would suck.” He smiled, a little painfully, although he hoped Rob couldn’t see that, and said, “We gotta get back and work on that tractor, but I’ll take you up on that one sometime. Promise.”

            “OK,” said Rob, beaming at them. “Great. I’ll…see you around?”

            “At the library,” said Jay, nodding. On the spur of the moment, he gave a little wink, and said, “Seeya around.”

            The look on Rob’s face was so obvious that Jay even felt a little embarrassed for him, as he and Lian headed back to the car.

            “Good job!” trilled Lian, smacking him on the arm. “Good job, good job, good job! That was so good, Jay.”

            “It’s _Miles_ ,” he corrected her, placing the bag in the back of the truck. “Be careful. And, hey, now you _have_ to invite ice cream girl over for dinner sometime.”

            “No I don’t,” replied Lian, beaming at him as she climbed into the passenger seat.

            “Yes,” he said, vaguely annoyed, “you _do_.”

            “No!” she sang. “Maya invited me to the county fair! She says there’ll be hayrides and ponies and stuff, and it’ll be super fun.”

            Backing out of the parking space, heading out of town, Jay said, “The fact that there’ll be hay everywhere is not a pro for me, girlie. Everybody in town still calls me _that guy who caught his lawn on fire_ -”

            “You can meet Rob there!” said Lian. “It’ll be fun!”

            Three days later, Jay stood in the middle of a big field, surrounded by hay, picnic tables, red and white checkered tablecloths, and lots of pies, and said: “This is _not_ fun.”

            “Only because you don’t have a cowboy hat,” Lian countered, with far too much venom for such an apparently mild threat.

            “Win me a goddamn cowboy hat, then” he murmured, nodding towards the various carnival games around them.

            “Swear jar,” she said, then she said, “OK,” and rushed off to the nearest ring toss. He watched her, but did not immediately follow her; a little, tiny bit of breathing room, he thought, might be good for her. (Plus she’d told him before they came, her little eyes narrowed and baring up at him, “ _Don’t screw this up for me and Maya OK!_ ”)

            There was a tap on his shoulder, and immediately Jay tensed, whipping around, barely keeping from dropping into a defensive crouch – and Rob stood there, looking mildly confused, an excellently-crafted cowboy hat on his head. “Woah,” he said. “Hi.”

            Jay blinked at him, then cleared his throat slightly, and said, “Hey.”

            “Sorry,” said Rob, uncertainly, but also sounding a little impressed. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

            “You didn’t,” replied Jay bluntly. “It’s my bad, really, just way too focused on lookin’ out for the little one.”

            “Yeah,” laughed Rob, glancing over at Lian, who was gleefully playing a game at a booth. Touching the brim of his hat, he added, “I see she’s trying to win you one of these bad boys.”

            “Yes,” replied Jay, nodding. “I need one, pretty bad. The whole Brokeback look just ain’t quite complete without it.”

            At this, Rob kind of watched him, smile frozen, for one second. And then he looked away slightly, and laughed self-consciously. “I’m desperate,” he said, “aren’t I?”

            Finally, Jay gave him a little grin. “Yeah,” he admitted, apologetically. “You are.”

            Rob raised an eyebrow, and Jay had to admire the valiant smile which hadn’t quite yet faded. “Interested, though?” he asked. “At all?”

            Jay considered this for a while. Then he glanced Rob up and down and said, “Maybe.”

            “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe is good.” There was a pause, and then Rob continued, “Hey, have you had any of Judith’s pecan pie yet? It’s practically famous, it’s so good.”

            And so Rob led him to get a slice of the pecan pie, which was actually unbelievably delicious, and then they hung back by a wide, tall oak tree, Jay keeping his eyes on Lian, running around, holding Maya’s hand, letting the older girl drag her from game to game.

            “All right,” said Rob, watching Jay. “Can I ask you something? Without meaning to be weird, or anything.”

            “Couldn’t be much weirder than I’ve heard before,” he said. “Shoot.”

            “Are you, like,” he said, “witness protection, or something? There’s definitely something weird going on here, but I just can’t put my finger on it.”

            Jay knew someone would have come to this conclusion. He didn’t know how many people had thought so, or said so out loud, but he figured it had to be quite a few. “Maybe,” he said again. “Couldn’t tell you if we were, though.”

            “True,” said Rob. “Is your name really Miles?”

            “Yeah,” said Jason. “Are you really a librarian?”

            “Yes,” laughed Rob. “In the summertime, anyway.”

            “What do you do the rest of the year?”

            “I’m a schoolteacher. Sixth grade,” Rob replied. He nodded out to where Lian and Maya were giggling together. “Maya’s a really good kid,” he said. “She’s great with, you know, new kids, kids who don’t know their way around so much.”

            “Donna,” began Jay, “is nursing an _unreal_ crush on her.”

            “Well, I can see that,” said Rob, laughing it off. And it was true: Lian was pretty transparent about it, the big, adoring eyes staring at the other girl, holding hands just a second too long. “Are you two going to be here for fall?”

            Jason suddenly realized Rob had edged slightly towards him. “No,” he replied. “Don’t think so, anyway. She has school.”

            “She seems very bright,” Rob said. “Her teachers are very lucky.”

            “Yeah,” said Jay. “They are.”

            Rob took another bite of the pecan pie. And then, thoughtfully, he said, “You’re really her father, aren’t you.”

            “What?” Jason looked at him. “No. I’m not. Do I look old enough to be the father of a ten-year-old?”

            “Hey,” said Rob, shrugging. “I’m a gay middle school teacher in rural Kansas. I don’t judge.”

            Somehow, and later Jay regretted this deeply, even though it had all turned out all right, Rob managed to convince Jay to go on a little tour with him. Ensuring that Lian was safe, taking a hayride on an old truck driven by Judith’s husband, asking Maya’s parents to keep an eye on her, he followed Rob around the little fair, re-introducing himself to a dozen people he met on that fateful night he lit his lawn on fire (if he had a quarter for every “ _Don’t you know that wet hay is_ -”…).

            Then they were in the barn, which was where the truck for the hayrides went when it wasn’t being used, and then, somewhere between saying, “Christ, place smells like pig shit,” and “I should get back to Lian,” he got kissed, and he kissed back.

            It was fucking surreal, is what it was, when Rob leaned forward with a quick little touch to the lips, testing the water. He wasn’t as tall as Jay, but not by much; his hair and eyes were dark, and Jay could tell he liked the little streak of white in Jay’s own hair, because he kept glancing up at it, pretending he wasn’t. As that thought was running through his mind, he leaned forward slightly, and Rob’s eyes lit up and there was another kiss, and then there was a wall, and some rutting up against the side of the wall, and, _damn_ , when did it get so hot in here? And Rob tasted like brown sugar and lemonade and pecan pie, and who’d kissed him like this last? Not Tommy – Tommy didn’t kiss him like that, ever, if their mouths crashed together it was hard and painful and aggressive. Not Talia, because he may have been taller than she’d been, but it always felt like, in some indefinable capacity, she had been leaning down to press their lips together. But Rob was just some guy whose last name he didn’t even know, and whose ass looked hot in those jeans, and so it was what it was.

            Jay’s mouth trailed down his jaw, to the other man’s neck, nibbling softly, unsure of how to be gentle. Rob’s hands fluttered up to his arms, and he gently pushed Jay away, and he whispered, “Who’s Lian?”

            Instantly, Jay pulled back, staring at him. “What?” he asked, slightly hazy (there was a tugging in his navel, and oh, _no_ , calm down, cowboy, not tonight).

            “You just said, you should get back to Lian,” said Rob. “I thought your little girl was named Donna.”

            _Fuck_ , thought Jay.

            “Yeah,” he said, and he let go of Rob. He shook his head, dropping his gaze so he didn’t have to look at him. “Yeah. I do have to get back out to her, though.”

            Rob eyed him, part curious, part suspicious. “You _are_ witness protection, aren’t you?” he asked, and he sounded like he sincerely believed it.

            Jay smiled dimly, almost sadly, and he said: “Wish I could tell you. Honestly do.”

            They parted ways that day, Rob waving him goodbye, Lian grinning happily and clutching three cowboy hats and a goldfish in a plastic bag, and Jay carrying two pies from Judith.

            “That was good,” said Lian, when they got home, digging through the cupboards for the biggest bowl she could find. “That was so much fun.”

            “It was,” replied Jay, as she extracted one, and filled it with tapwater.

            “Did you have fun with Rob the librarian?” she asked, feigning nonchalance. Pretty well, too, for a nine-year-old.

            Sticking the pies in the fridge, Jay said, “Lots of fun. How about you and Maya?”

            “She’s so much fun,” she sighed, but it was a contented, pleased little sigh. “I like her a lot.” Gently, she opened the plastic bag, and tipped the goldfish into the bowl. “Did you kiss Rob?”

            Jay closed the refrigerator door, and looked at her.

            Innocently, she asked, “What?”

            “Why do you care,” he said, “who I kiss?”

            She shrugged. “I dunno,” she said. “Because I care about you?”

            Jay stared at her. It took a while before he realized he was actually speechless.

            When she went to bed that night, he couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking about how soft Rob’s lips had been, even with the little scrub of stubble scraping along his jaw. Jason liked that, though, he thought. He liked Rob a lot. More than he’d liked somebody in a long time, that was for sure. And he couldn’t even tell the guy his goddamn real name.

            Thinking about kissing, about soft touches, and about how he hadn’t had any for a while made Jay feel weird and uncomfortable, so for the second time in less than a week, he fished a little packet out of his bag, and went out to the front porch in the dark, crickets chirping in the night, and lit up a cigarette, and tucked it in between his lips. The glowing tip was like another star in the darkness, around which a whole universe could situate itself, and Jason could do nothing but stare into the night and shiver, but not because of the cold.

            Jay heard a small _crack_ , like a twig underfoot.

            He stopped, and listened. Then he dropped the cigarette, smashed it with his foot, and went back inside. He closed Lian’s door gently, then took the duffel back out from under his bed again.

            Lian was awoken in the middle of the night by two loud, sharp gunshots, resounding in the nighttime air. Outside, Jay swore under his breath, angry that he hadn’t brought a silencer worth a damn with him, hadn’t had the time or the foresight to attach one.

            He went back into the house and grabbed a roll of trash bags from the kitchen. A door creaked slightly, and Jay stopped, then trudged over to the hallway leading to Lian’s bedroom.

            She stared out at him, holding onto the doorknob like always, eyes wide, but dull.

            “What are you doing?” he asked her, quietly.

            “Are you OK?” she asked.

            “Don’t you _ever_ open that door,” he told her, his voice hard, “if I close it on you.”

            “I heard gunshots,” she said.

            “Lian Harper,” he continued, his stony gaze bearing down on her. “Never. _Ever_. Open the door, when you hear gunshots outside. _Never_ in your life. Do you hear me?”

            She stared at him, the whites of her eyes milky and stark in the darkness.

            “Go back to bed,” he said. “Shut the door.”

            “Jay,” she began, but he shook his head.

            “Go to sleep,” he repeated. “Everything’s OK. I promise.”

            She watched him for a few moments longer, and then retreated back into her room, swinging the door shut behind her until it latched with a little _clack._

Outside, in the night, he dragged two heavy trash bags out past the trees, fetched the shovel from the garage, and didn’t go back inside until the dark earth looked like it had hardly been disturbed at all.


	5. Sins of the Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason reads Harry Potter and Lian adopts a dog.

            Another thunderstorm blew through over the weekend. They put three different Taylor Swift albums into the stereo and played every song loudly, again and again and again, until Lian had taught Jay every single line. She said her favorite song was “Enchanted,” but he saw the way she got just a little bit quieter when “The Best Day” came on. (He tried to get her pumped with “Love Story” but she was having none of it. “Romeo,” she declared, fire in her eyes, “is _dumb_.”)

            “Romeo is dumb,” he agreed, sitting on the couch with her, a giant bowl of Cheeto puffs between them. “But if you ask me, it’s that fu- friggin’ priest who really messed them up. Padre shouldn’t have been handing out drugs to a fourteen-year-old.”

            Lian held her hand out, watching him with those dark eyes. She didn’t even have to say it, and he coughed up a dollar, placing it in her hand (she’d agreed to give up on the twenty dollar charge a while ago). Throwing a handful of Cheetos into her mouth, she shrugged, and that was when it occurred to Jay that Lian, as a nine-year-old, had not yet actually read _Romeo and Juliet_ , and thus the nuances of the debate on underage responsibility were lost on her. It was the second week of August, and veering far too close to his birthday for his comfort. There were two days a year he really hated (one significantly more than the other, he’d admit), and those were the days that marked the beginning and end of his life. Once, Dick had suggested, only half-joking, that they celebrate a re-birthday for him, to commemorate a Coming-Back. The dumbass should’ve known that was a terrible idea, and Jay hadn’t spoken to him for a while after that. Not that Dick noticed. He and Jay didn’t speak all that much anyway.

            He hated birthdays, hated remembering that a year was past. Whenever possible, he did his very best to forget it. Sometimes he succeeded, in the middle of guns and drugs and delicate missions which often devolved into him smacking heads together and into walls. But he didn’t think he’d be able to put it behind him now, not when he didn’t do anything other than sit around and watch Lian do various highly normal fourth grader things.

            In the small backpack Lian had brought with her, along with some clothes and her Taylor Swift CDs, there’d been two thick workbooks, one for math and one for Language Arts (this is how Jay had known she was going into fourth grade). She told him all about her teacher last year, Mrs. Taylor, and how she loved _Oklahoma!_ the musical although Lian didn’t really like musicals and she never understood why Laurie went for Curley in the end, when _obviously_ Ado Annie was _right there_ -

            Jason didn’t think he’d ever actually seen _Oklahoma!_ , but that just made them even. She’d never read Shakespeare, he’d never seen Rodgers and Hammerstein. Fair enough.

            In the first month they’d been stuck in the house together, Lian had informed him that she was to do three pages of schoolwork a day, without exception. The first few times he forgot to mention it to her, she got all huffy and annoyed and once she said, “You would be a _really bad daddy_ ,” and he was confused because he didn’t know if that hurt him or not, but after that she mellowed out. Six weeks later, and she was in the very last few pages of each book. She’d started doing only two pages a day, and then intentionally skipping days – and whenever Jay pointed it out, she got mad at him and locked herself in her room. (Jay picked the lock in twenty-one seconds, but didn’t tell her that.)

            “What’s a preposition?” she wondered aloud, thoughtfully, sitting at the kitchen table, as Jay flipped hamburger patties on the stove.

            Grease spat and crackled from the pan, stinging his bare skin. “Everything an airplane can do to a cloud,” he replied, wiping his hands with a paper towel. He turned around, leaning against the counter to meet her gaze. The little girl watched him, her legs tucked underneath her, the pencil’s pink eraser tapping against her chin. “Or everything a squirrel can do to a tree,” he added, with a shrug. “Both, I think.”

            Her frown a crease between her eyebrows, she asked, “What does that mean?”

            Jay shrugged. “Dunno,” he told her. “But it’s the only thing I remember from middle school, so – you’re ahead of the curve.”

            She looked down at her workbook. “Hmm,” she said.

            The hamburger buns in the fridge were cold, so Jay took a few out and put them in the toaster. Glancing over Lian’s shoulder, he asked: “Want some help?”

            “That’s OK,” said Lian.

            Although he didn’t say it, it kind of hurt him that she didn’t ask for help. Words on a page had always been difficult for him, not because he didn’t know what they meant, but because they all looked the same to him, blurred together. Reading was slow and frustrating – he liked it, hell, he’d made it through _Romeo and Juliet_ , perfectly goddamn capable of getting through a Magic Treehouse serial – but he was out of practice, to say the least. Hadn’t read on his own for a long time. Not since school, he thought.

            “Actually,” said Lian, filling in a blank, then closing the workbook and looking up at him. “You can help me.”

            “Yeah?” he asked. “OK. What do you want on your burger?”

            “Everything,” she answered. “Can we eat in the living room?”

            Slathering condiments on the sliced, toasted buns, he replied, “Do we ever _not_?” Once the burgers were served up, and he’d scooped a few handfuls of Fritos onto each of their plates, they went into the living room. Jay spread out on the big couch, which was slightly too small for his hulking man-figure, and Lian set her food on the big armchair as she ran to her room to grab something.

            When she came back out, she toted a heavy book in her little hands. Carefully balancing her book and her plate, she asked him, “Have you ever read Harry Potter?”

            “No,” he answered, lifting his bun and spreading Fritos all over the hamburger. “Have you?”

            “Yes,” she said curtly. “Daddy reads them to me. But I’m good at reading, so I read them out loud to him sometimes too.”

            Jay sat up slightly, on the couch.

            “So I’m gonna read some to you,” she said, opening the thick book. “Sorry it’s the fifth one. And I’m already on page seven hundred and six.”

            “Sheesh. How many pages are there?”

            “Eight hundred and seventy.”

            “You’re _f_ -”

            “Swear jar!”

            He sighed deeply, then leaned back again. “OK,” he said. “Go.”

            She started to read. Every few minutes, when she started to stumble on words, she’d stop and eat some Fritos, take a few bites of her burger, reading ahead thoughtfully. When she resumed, she didn’t always start back up where she’d left off, but Jay enjoyed it anyway, listening to her ramble on about Harry and Hermione and Ron and the Um Bridge, which Jay suspected was her mispronouncing _umbrage._

            After they’d finished eating, she stuck to her same pattern: reading, then a few minutes of silence except for pages turning, then more reading. “Come here,” she said to Jay.

            “What?” he asked, glancing up at her; he was lying on the couch now, eyes closed. “No.”

            “Come _here_.”

            “I’m not carrying you to bed, Lian, you’re a big girl and you can walk all the way to your room all by-”

            “Read with me,” she said.

            He watched her. Then he sat up straight, making room for her on the couch. “OK,” he said. “Come on.”

            She scrambled off the armchair and onto the couch, sinking into the indent where he sat, leaning against his body. His arm, along the back of the couch, created a comfy little niche in which she could tuck herself, and then she opened the book in her lap, pointed at the line she was on, and continued to read.

            By the time she stopped, Harry and the gang were debarking Threstrals in London, heading desperately down to the Department of Mysteries to save Harry’s godfather, Serious Black (godfather? Actual father? Uncle? Jay was unclear on this). “Wait,” said Jay, leaning over her, eyes searching for the spot she’d left off. “Do they find him?”

            She looked up at him, partly amused, partly puzzled. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never read this before.”

            “Keep going,” said Jay.

            She yawned. “I’m sleepy.”

            Internally, Jason debated with himself for a moment. And then she closed the book, and settled even more in towards his body.

            “Jay,” she said. “Carry me to bed.”

            “Didn’t I _just_ say-?”

            “Pwease!” She looked up at him with big puppy eyes, pawing on his chest like a little cat. “Pwease, pwease, pwease! Uncle Jay! Cousin Miles!” She laughed, and squeezed him, something like a hug.

            Slightly perturbed, although he couldn’t quite pinpoint why, he said, “Don’t call me Uncle Jay. I’ll take you to your room, just stop whining.”

            She shrieked in delight and lay across his lap; he stood up, carrying her. She was almost weightless after the heavy lifting he was used to, in the life he led. Naturally, her arms curled around his neck, and she turned her head to bury her face in his chest.

            He laid her down in bed. “You’re not even in PJs yet,” he said.

            “Yeah,” she said, curling up on the bed. “But I’m sleepy. Sleepy, sleepy, sleepy.”

            He hesitated. “You want me to tuck you in?”

            “No,” she said, eyes closed already. “That’s OK. ‘Night Jay.”

            “’Night Lian. Sleep tight. You let me know if you get scared, OK?”

            “Why would I-” she yawned, “-why would _I_ get scared?” When he didn’t reply, she added, “If you get a nightmare, you can come sleep in my bed tonight.”

            “I’ll be all right.”

            “If you say so.” He did say so, and he committed to it. He left her room, leaving the door slightly ajar like always. Then he took the dishes to the sink, washing them then and there because what’s the point in leaving them sitting around, when it’s just the two of them? Then he went through the house and did the same check he did every night, windows and doors. Then he went back to the living room and saw that Lian had left her book on the couch. He picked it up, and looked at it. She’d folded the page she was on, a little dog-eared corner.

            He fell asleep troubled that night, book lying on the bed beside him, the image of an arch with a thin, fluttering veil trapped in his head. Hermione’s words echoed in his mind. _There aren’t any voices, Harry. It’s an empty archway_.

\----

            “Oh, yeah,” said Rob, from underneath the hood of the car. “It’s just the HT leads. Easy replacement.”

            “Good,” replied Jay. “I was afraid we’d be biking into town from now on.” Rob extracted himself from the engine, closing it behind him. “Coke?” he asked, gesturing to a cooler.

            With a wry nod, Rob asked, “Nothing stronger?”

            “Nah. Not when it’s just me and the kid.”

            “Well,” said Rob, taking the can from Jay, watching him. “It’s not just you and the kid right now, is it?” It wasn’t, and Jay didn’t like the look of the guy in that thin, dirty tank top, skinny but not small, attractive but not hot. _Twink_ , Jay found himself thinking sourly, and then he didn’t think that, kind of shocked that he had in the first place. Rob asked, “Where is the little princess, anyway?”

            Gesturing out the door of the garage, Jay said, “She’s making a collage, or something. I just gave her the craft supplies, she’s the artist.”

            “And you actually let her out of your sight for a minute? I’m impressed.”

            He tugged a small black device off his waistband, then brought it to his mouth and pressed a button. “Little Red, this is the Huntsman, what’s your status, over and out.”

            The walkie-talkie burst to life with the garbled, fuzzy sound of Lian’s voice. “Roger that Huntsman, I’m still inside being mad that we don’t have any good pictures, I really like taking selfies so we’re gonna do some of those when you come back in, are you having fun with the librarian, over and out.”

            Rob grinned at that, and blushed a little bit, but Jay was all business when he replied: “I’m having great fun with the librarian, thanks for asking, he’s about to fix our car.” He held the walkie-talkie out to Rob and said: “Say hi.”

            “Hello, Donna,” said Rob.

            “It’s _Little Red_ ,” she replied. “You can be the Wolf.” After a pause, she added, “Oh, over and out.”

            Jay lowered the device, and Rob grinned at him. “Very clever,” he said. “Why the fairy tale motif?”

            With a shrug, Jay replied, “She likes it. I humor her.”

            “You make,” said Rob, holding the cold can of Diet Coke in hand, “a really good dad.”

            “Thanks,” replied Jay. “But I’m not a dad.”

            “Come on,” said Rob pointedly, grinning at the walkie-talkie. “You kind of are.”

            This, Jason found, he couldn’t even argue. Instead of doing so, he just sort of leaned against the garage counter, covered in screws and tools. “So,” he began, “what do I owe you?”

            Rob laughed into his soda can, and Jay grinned back at him.

            “Sorry,” he said, sounding genuinely apologetic, but also enjoying the fun smile on the other man’s face. “Little too much bad-porno line there.”

            “Just a tad, yeah.”

            “I didn’t mean it like that.”

            “As in, _Sir, I take cash, credit, or blow jobs_?”

            Jay laughed. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly like that.”

            The way that Rob watched him wasn’t exactly _hungry_ , because Jay had seen hunger on people’s faces and didn’t like to call it that; it wasn’t the predatory sort of glee Tommy always got out of watching him work, or the odd, pitiful power-play with which Talia gazed at him. But it was something. And, unlike Tommy or Talia – it stung him, really, when he thought of it, how the two of them had been the only ones he’d ever been with – unlike with either of them, though, Jay thoroughly liked the look on Rob’s face.

            As it turned out, Jay didn’t blow him (although he thought about it, really, really hard), but they did make out in the back of the truck a little. Back of the truck, God, what had he become?

            Lying under Rob’s warm body, stubble bristling along Jay’s jaw, down to his neck, Jay thought that if he ever retired, it would be to this nice little hick town in The Middle of Nowhere, Kansas. He liked Rob. Damn, he liked Rob, liked that he was a middle school teacher, that when he explained things he got really delighted and talked a little more clearly, like a good teacher should, without ever talking down. He liked that Rob didn’t ask a whole lot of questions, but knew that there was still something more behind Jay – or, behind Miles, really. Plus, damn, the kid kissed good.

            Rob’s hands wandered down Jay’s sides, meeting the spot where his t-shirt ended; he gently pressed the tips of his fingers along the bare skin of Jay’s hips, sending electrified shocks up and down Jason’s spine. He felt it deep in his chest, stuck in his jaw, shuddering along his back, and, most significantly, a warm tug in his navel, blood rushing to his lap.

            A tinny little voice lit up between them, breaking through the hot tension of the moment. “Huntsman this is Little Red, my green marker fell in the drain and I can’t get it out, please come help immediately, over and out.”

            For one moment, Jay and Rob stared at each other; Rob’s eyes were hazy and his mouth in a small, perfect ‘o.’ Then Rob lowered his face into Jay’s shoulder and laughed, and Jay echoed his laughter, although his was more strained. “OK,” said Rob, and he slipped off of Jay, sitting up in the car. “You gonna answer her?”

            Without replying to Rob, Jay took the walkie-talkie off his belt and said, long-sufferingly: “Huntsman to Little Red, why is your marker anywhere near the drain? Over and out.”

            “It got glue on it, over and out.”

            “Why were you putting glue on your markers?”

            “I got glue on my hands!”

            “So you put it in the drain?”

            “I put it in the sink. It fell in the drain. Come get it, OK!”

            She sounded impatient, and Jay let out a very loud, emphatic sigh into the device, then added, “Over and out, Little Red. Give me five minutes.”

            “OK. Tell the Big Bad Wolf I say hi.”

            “Will do. Over.” He paused, holding the walkie-talkie and waiting for her to say something else. When she did not, he lowered it, and glanced over at Rob apologetically. In response, Rob only grinned. “Duty calls,” said Jay, with his own half-hearted attempt at a smile.

            Rob shrugged. “I dunno,” he said, with a heaving, tired sort of sigh. Sheepishly, he almost laughed. “This isn’t really like me, anyway.”

            “Believe me,” said Jay, “me neither.”

            They watched each other.

            “Rob,” Jay began.

            The other man shook his head. “We’ll pick up later,” he said, patting Jason’s thigh then getting to his feet, then stepping off the edge of the truck, back into the garage. “Right where we left off.”

            Jason held the walkie-talkie in his hand, and looked at Rob, grinning back at him with those round brown eyes, sympathetic and gentle and kind. Then he said, “No, we won’t.”

            Rob didn’t say anything. His smile didn’t even flicker.

            “I’m leaving soon,” said Jason.

            “How soon?”

            “I don’t know,” he answered, honestly. “But I’m not…” he trailed off, then followed Rob’s movements, slipping off the truck. After a small, silent breath, he said: “Look, you’re great.”

            “Thanks,” said Rob, squeezing in the comment before Jason could say more. The look in his eyes told Jay that he knew precisely what was coming, and that he wasn’t pleased, but wasn’t all that cut up, either.

            “But,” said Jay, and Rob nodded expectantly (Jason couldn’t tell if he liked that Rob thought he understood, or if it really, really, seriously grated against him). “I…”

            He trailed off delicately, considering for a moment how exactly to phrase this. _Just got out of a bad relationship_ , although technically true, didn’t seem to remotely cover it. _Have no experience with anything resembling a normal, healthy relationship_ was also true, although might betray his intense insecurity and he wasn’t about to admit that. _Am a self-made vigilante-slash-drug-lord trained by the Batman, and died once_. Again, true, but if he told Rob, he’d have to kill him (Jay thought this soberly, then thought, _Fuck, didn’t I used to think that was funny?_ ).

            It seemed that he waited too long to finish his sentence, provide an explanation, so Rob hazarded: “…worry too much about harmless summer flings?”

            Jay’s eyebrows raised. “Summer flings?” he echoed. “What are we, high school sweethearts?”

            “Not remotely,” replied Rob. “You know for a tough guy, you seem pretty terrified of commitment.”

            “Yeah,” sighed Jay, glancing out the garage at the big old house. “Runs in the family.”

            There was a silence between them. Finally, Jason looked back at Rob. “Hey,” said Rob, reaching out to tap his arm. “I’ll get you those replacement parts. So I’ll be back at least once, before you go.”

            “Right,” said Jason. “Thanks for that.”

            Another quiet, and then Rob, voice kind of hushed and a little amused, asked: “So now that we’ve had our tongues down each other’s throats, you want to tell me why it still feels super awkward?”

            “My fault,” said Jay, immediately.

            “Shut up,” said Rob, kindly. “I like you. Not going down that easily.” He turned around and headed out of the garage, towards the powder-blue farmhouse. “Now come on,” he called, over his shoulder. “Gotta go help Little Red, right?”

            Rob ended up staying for dinner, at Lian’s insistence. After they ate, he read more Harry Potter with her, then decorated her pajamas with stickers of smiling stars and sparkly ‘ _A+_ ’s. He stuck around after Jay put her to bed, and they didn’t kiss when he left, but Rob did take hold of his wrist, draw close, and say, “She’s a good kid. You take good care of her,” and Jason couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or instruction. He offered to give them a ride into town the next day, but Jason turned him down. The thunderstorms had all passed, and the sky was bright and clear and approaching late summer (though not quite there yet). It was, what, two and a half miles? There were nice wilderness trails through the forest and fields on either side of the road. If they had to get into town, they’d take a little hike.

            A day later, sweating in the stifling, muggy summer heat, at the edge of a field full of high yellow grasses, Jason took a very long sigh and said: “Lian, leave it alone.”

            “No!” said the little girl stubbornly.

            “Let’s go,” said Jay.

            “No!” she repeated, shooting a dirty look back at him. “We have to help him!”

            Jason watched her for a moment. She took a step forward, and he reached out and took her by the upper arm. “Lian,” he said seriously, tugging her backwards. “Come on. We gotta get moving if we want to make it to town in time for lunch.”

            Again, Lian said: “ _No_.” Both of them, Jay thought, had been saying that too much lately. She scrambled away from his grip, struggling to jerk herself away from her hands; but she did not run away from him, towards the dog that lay on the side of the beaten path, eyes closed and unmoving in the summer sun. Turning around to look up at Jason, she said, “We have to take him to the aminal hospital.”

            Uneasily, Jay replied: “He’s fine. He’s just sleeping, don’t wake him up. Come on, let’s go.”

            She turned back to face the dog again. It looked like something big and classic, like a Golden Retriever. There was no collar around its neck. “He’s not dead,” said Lian, her voice hard.

            “I didn’t say-”

            “I know that’s what you mean.”

            He wanted to reach out and take hold of her again, but he didn’t. Jay crouched, slightly behind the little girl. “Look,” he said, lowering his voice. “Maybe his owner’s gonna come back for him.”

            “Maybe he’s lost,” said Lian, without glancing back at Jason. “If we bring him into town, his owner can find him.” In response to this last hopeful option, Jason said her name gently, trying to keep a little bit of pain he didn’t know he had out of his voice. It was a _dog_. Who knew how many human corpses he’d encountered in his work? How many bodies were lifeless, _because_ of him? And yet it was a dog that gave him a little twinge in his heart, pain and regret and distaste. For the second time, he reached out to Lian, but this time he took her hand, tucking her fingers between his. He realized he couldn’t care less about the dog, but the look on her face was killing him.

            He pointed to the dog’s side and said: “He’s not breathing, Lian.”

            She tugged away from him, but he held onto her hand. “Let me see,” she said. When he did not let go, she turned around to look at him, fury in her eyes. “Let,” she repeated, “me. _See_.”

            He didn’t know what to do. Instead of letting her go, however, he just stood up. “I’ll go check,” he said.

            “I don’t trust you,” she replied, and that stung.

            The sun hung above them, blazing down like a perfect spherical hole pricked out of a bright blue sky. They were mere feet from the shade, and had passed a little creek a while ago. A profound sense of sorrow for the dog on the ground welled up in Jay; if only the animal had made it a little farther, and lapped the low, muddy water from the stream. From the forest a breeze blew out at them, across the wide plain. Jay glanced back at the direction they were headed; a little farther on, he could see the flat black expanse of road, the top of which shimmered steadily in a heat mirage.

            “Fine,” said Jason. He held the little girl’s hand, and approached the dog-shaped hole in the tall grasses by the side of the road, where the canine lay stiffly. There were no flies buzzing around its muzzle and nose, which did not shine with a regular sheen of dampness. With paws dusty and cracked by the hot ground, the dog’s fur had been probably at one point a beautiful golden-yellow, but was covered in dirt now. One ear, although not bloodied, was missing a chunk.

            A few feet away from the dog, Jason let go of Lian. “Stay here,” he said. When she protested, he shook his head and repeated, “Stay _here_.”

            He knelt by the dog. This close, he could tell that it was in fact breathing, but he hoped Lian couldn’t tell. Warily, he placed a hand on the dog’s side. It let out a grunting snort of a breath, and Lian said, “ _See?_ ”

            Then she moved forward, and Jason said, “Hey, stay right th-” but she didn’t join him at the dog’s side; she went behind him, unzipping and extracting something out of his backpack. Then she knelt down beside him, unscrewed the top of a water bottle, and lowered it to the dog’s muzzle.

            After a moment, its eyes opened slightly, and a red tongue flitted out of its mouth, lapping at the water streaming from the bottle. Looking down at the dog softly, her little thin fingers holding the water bottle, she said, “He just needed a little water.” Jason watched her tipping the bottle until it was mostly empty, slaking the animal’s thirst. “He doesn’t have a collar,” she said, reaching down to scratch the dog behind its jaw. “Maybe he’s a stray.”

            He patted the dog’s body. “Maybe he is,” he said.

            Finally, the dog stopped lapping at the water, and Lian put the cap back on, and put it back in Jason’s backpack. “It doesn’t look like he can walk OK,” she said smartly, getting to her feet. “So you’ll have to carry him.”

            “ _Carry_ -?”

            “Mh-hm. Into town.”

            Jason looked up at her for a long moment. Then he began, “You know, Lian, that seems awful nice for a half-dead stray left on the side of the road-”

            “He looks hurt,” said Lian, crossing her arms. “Aren’t you supposed to help things that get hurt?”

            “Sure,” said Jay cautiously. “Well. People, mostly.”

            She was determined, and it didn’t seem to be that weepy sort of determined where she was about to start yelling and accusing him of all sorts of things to get her way. Instead, she seemed calm, completely aware of what she was doing. Patiently – as if a parent explaining to a child (Jason got a huge whiff of, _Christ_ , she is _so_ Roy’s daughter) – she began, “If you love me, you will carry that gosh-darn dog-”

            “All right, all right,” he said, cutting her off. Tucking his hands under the dog’s body, he murmured, “No need to get all dramatic.”

            By the time they got to town, there was an undeniable sheen of uncomfortable sweat all over Jason’s body. The dog wasn’t particularly heavy, but Jay had a suspicion that it was in fact heavier than Lian was – and the fur didn’t help, in the midday heat. At least it didn’t struggle, hardly stirring in his arms. Once Lian assented to dropping their guest off at the only vet’s office in town, a tiny place with a small fish tank on the receptionist’s desk, they headed off to the little diner for lunch. Lian took it upon herself to narrate the life of every pet her friends from school had ever had.

            “What?” asked Jay, in between bites of his burger. “You never had a dog at home?”

            She shook her head, constructing, as always, a smiley face using her French fries. “No,” she said, and she giggled slightly, looking up at him. “Daddy’s not good at looking after things. I’ve had _five_ goldfish.”

            “Damn,” replied Jason, sipping on his cold Diet Coke. “Speaking of, Bo is still kickin’, right? Or, swimming, I guess.”

            Bow was the goldfish Lian had won at the county fair. When naming her (Lian insisted it was a girl fish), Lian had said, _Bow like bow-and-arrow_ , but Jay always thought he was saying _Bo_ when he said it out loud, so he’d just given in to the idiosyncrasies of nine-year-old decisions, and hadn’t brought it up with her. “Yeah!” she said excitedly, with a ketchup-stained grin. “Bow,” Bo _w_ , B-O-W, the nonverbal difference haunted Jay, “is fine. Usually Daddy flushes them down the toilet by now.”

            “Harsh,” said Jason.

            “Because they’re dead,” Lian added. “Not because he’s mean.”

            “Oh,” said Jay. “Good.”

            As she chewed on her chicken tenders, she asked him, “Have you ever had a dog?”

            “Nope,” answered Jason. “No pets for me. Also not great at looking after things, I guess. Like your daddy.”

            Pointedly, Lian protested, “You’re good at looking after me.”

            Jason smiled slightly, but didn’t look up at her. He did not think she saw the bitterness on his lips, like a poison. “Well. So’s your dad.”

            “And,” she added, “you did good with the dog.”

            “Thanks,” he said. “You did good, convincing me to do it. That’s what matters, you know. If you hadn’t wanted to do the good thing, then I wouldn’t have done it.” He wiped his hands on a napkin, and pointed at her. “So those karma points belong to you.”

            She grinned up at him, the hard plastic of the diner’s table separating the two of them. Her legs were tucked under her, and she leaned forward, chewing up the last of her food. They were right by the window, and the bright sunlight met her eyes at the perfect angle, lighting up the shades of brown, hazel, gold, and flecks of green like stained glass. “That’s not how karma works,” she said.

            “Oh?” asked Jason, raising his eyebrows. “Who says?”

            “Connor,” she replied.

            “And what is it that makes Connor the karmic authority?”

            “He’s Buddhist,” said Lian.

            Jason considered this for a moment. Lian went to wipe her greasy hand on her pants, and Jason said, “Hey,” and tossed a napkin at her. Then he said, “OK, I guess that makes sense.

            They hung out in the park a little while, then Lian returned all her books to the library. Jason asked at the desk if Rob was there, but the nice old lady there informed him, with a knowing twinkle in her eye, that Rob doesn’t work afternoons on Wednesdays. Not long after that, they had to head back to avoid walking home in the dark. Before they left, Lian dragged him back to the vet’s office, where the dog was up and moving, nose damp once again. When they walked in, the dog’s tail started to wag, eyes lighting up. Vet said they’d taken pictures and would put them up around town, but no one had mentioned anything about a lost dog lately, and they didn’t recognize this one (and with such a small town, they knew pretty much everyone’s dog).

            Lian’s only question was, “Can we take him home?” and a few minutes later, they were heading down the road back to the house, the dog’s leash in hand.

            “You feed him,” said Jay, as soon as they got home. “And you take him for walks, and you pick up his poop. And you can’t take him with you when you go home.”

            Lian squeezed the dog’s neck, sitting on the floor in the kitchen. “Why not?” she asked, eyes closed blissfully. “If Daddy says so-”

            “You just said Daddy isn’t good at looking after things.”

            “That’s OK,” said Lian, snuggling close to the big dog, which turned its head and licked her face with a wet pink tongue. She giggled slightly, scratching behind its ears. “He doesn’t have to. I can take care of the nice doggie.”

            “Nice doggie,” echoed Jason, fetching something from the cabinets (he had found that life with Lian generally revolved around meals, and it was almost dinnertime, so he wasn’t about to keep her waiting). “Is that his name?”

            “ _Her_ name,” said Lian thoughtfully, curled up with the animal. Thoughtfully, she held up the dog’s face, looking into her eyes. “And no,” Lian said.  “She has to have a real name.”

            Jason dumped hamburger meat into a skillet, prodded it with a wooden spoon. “Oh yeah?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Are you taking suggestions?”

            She considered this, then looked up at him. “OK.”

            He watched the meat sizzle in the pan before him, deep in thought. “I dunno,” he said fairly. “I’ve always liked the name Catherine.”

            Disappointed, Lian said, “Not a _real_ real name. A dog name.”

            “Spot?”

            She did not deign this with a reply, only glanced up at him disdainfully.

            “No,” he said, looking down at her. “Don’t look at me like that. You just said _dog name_ , Spot’s a dog name.” For a second, still leaning across the dog (which also looked up at Jay with wet brown eyes), Lian just watched him. And then she started giggling, burying her face in the dog’s fur. Naturally, Jay couldn’t help himself. He only half-hearted fought back a grin, then asked her, “What?”

            Still laughing, she looked up, peeking up at him from between her fingers. With a red little face from laughter, her little teeth visible in a big, sincere smile, she pointed at his chest.

            He glanced down, confused for a moment. Then he laughed. He wore a Superman apron to protect against the sizzling oil. “Hey,” he said. “It’s not _that_ funny.” Wooden spoon still in hand, he struck what he hoped was a very Superman-ish pose. She burst out into uncontrollable laughter, high-pitched and screeching. He glanced down and said to her, “I _am_ a superhero, you know.”

            Her laughter died slightly, and her eyes got very big. In the pan, the meat crackled and spit, and they could hear the dog’s low breathing.

            Lian said, “Yeah you are, Jay. I knew you were, all along,” and smiled at him, and Jay turned back to the food and glanced down at the bright blue and red on his chest and dreaded the day he had to go home.


	6. Point of No Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dog gets a name, and Dick visits.

            They ended up naming the dog Taco, because that’s what they had for dinner that night, and the dog really enjoyed the small helping of ground meat Lian had delicately placed on a plate for her. She giggled as the dog lapped it up. “My daddy,” she said wisely, glancing back at Jay, “calls taco meat, _monkey meat_. He says they make tacos out of monkeys.”

            Jason watched her, a little grin on his face. “Your daddy lied to you, little girl,” he said. “No monkey meat in tacos.”

            On August fourteenth Dick called. Jason had bought Lian a few disposable cameras, and they’d had the film on the first one developed already; pictures were spread out across the kitchen table, and she was cutting them up and pasting them together, making a beautiful, disorganized collage. Lots of hearts were drawn around pictures of Jay. He watched her work, and saw she beamed in most of her selfies, but he didn’t see a single one where he was smiling.

            When the phone went off, she stopped working immediately, jerking up to look at him. Her face was pale. She worried far too much, Jay thought, for a nine-year-old.

            He thought about going outside or somewhere to answer this call, away from Lian’s hearing. But then he thought that would make her even more worried, so he answered it with one hand, putting the other on her head, fingers brushing through her hair. “Yeah,” he said.

            “Hey,” replied Dick’s voice. Not Roy. Not a good sign.

            “Hi,” answered Jason. “What’s up?”

            “Is it Daddy?” asked Lian, looking up.

            “Can I talk to her?” Dick asked.

            Jason took the phone away from his hear and asked, “You want to talk to Uncle Dick?”

            Her expression fell. “OK,” she said, and he handed the phone to her. As she spoke, she looked down sadly at the collage before her. “Hi Uncle Dick,” she said. A pause. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s OK. I’m just…gluing some pictures and stuff. Yeah. Uh-huh. Where’s my daddy?” She was silent for a long while, listening to Dick talk. “Why?” she asked, and there was another silence. Finally she slumped forward slightly and said: “OK. Bye.”

            She handed the phone back to Jason, who took it anxiously. “Everything OK?”

            “Yeah,” replied Dick, with a sigh. His voice was unusually smooth over the phone, a high-tech connection clear as cowl lenses. “Well. Yeah.”

            “Well?”

            “Don’t react,” said Dick, and Jay didn’t stop gently brushing through Lian’s hair. “We lost contact with Roy.”

            Jason wanted to close his eyes, his heart pumping very slowly. But he did not. Below him, Lian drew hearts on her collage with her red marker. “So?” he asked. “What does that mean?”

            “Nothing, yet. He’s in deep cover, we thought it might happen eventually.”

            “What else do you know?”

            “I know,” Dick continued, and there was a sort of edge to his voice – not like it was viscerally painful to say this, although it might have been, but as if he actually _was_ in pain, physically, “that even when he is finished, we’ll keep him for a week or so before Lian can come home.”

            “Why?”

            “He’s using again,” answered Dick, and he sounded tired, but not exhausted. “My bet is on coercion. This is Slade we’re talking about, after all.”

            Roy’s voice, junkie-slurred and sobbing, begging to talk to his daughter, came back to Jay. He wondered how long Roy had been shooting up, before Dick found out. “Everything OK?” Jason ventured cautiously, careful not to say anything that might upset the little girl.

            “In my professional opinion,” sighed Dick, “everything’s fine. Roy’s a big guy and he can take care of himself.”

            It was hard to avoid saying something that would alert Lian to the trouble her father might be in. But at least Dick was good at picking up his cues. Without glancing down at the girl, Jason said, “It’s been a while.”

            “That is has,” replied Dick. “Sorry, I know we said a month or so. You might have to keep her into September.”

            “School-?”

            “You can teach, right?” Dick laughed, but again he sounded restrained, like something was physically digging into his body.

            “Hey,” said Jason, feeling weird because he wasn’t used to saying this to Dick but he guessed it might be a side-effect of spending so long with a little kid, starting to feel like a dad, “you OK?”

            “Yeah,” sighed Dick. “There’s something else, Jay.”

            “What happened to you?”

            “Oh, I got shot in the head.”

            Jason didn’t really know what to say to this. Uncertainly, he repeated, “So…are you OK?”

            There was almost a hint of cheerfulness in Dick’s voice as he continued, although it could have been his natural tone. Lian shook her head away from Jason’s touch, and held a picture over her head. “Do you like this one?” she asked.

            “Yeah,” said Jason distractedly. “Dick?”

            “I’m fine,” Dick replied. “Out of commission for a while, that’s why I called.”

            “I thought you called to deliver important information.”

            “Nah. Donna told me not to tell you about Roy anyway, she thinks you’ll freak out the kid.” Indignant, Jason smarted at this. “But I thought I’d call to let you know that I’ve got my heart set on visiting because I have missed Lian’s precious little face for far too long.”

            “You sure about that?”

            “Absolutely.”

            “Don’t _you_ have a precious little face you’re responsible for, as well?”

            “Yes,” said Dick, and even across the phone Jay could hear the smile fade from his lips. “I mean, no. I’m not his father, Jay.”

            “No, but his dad’s six feet under somewhere, so-”

            Dick didn’t say anything, but Jason cut off immediately. His throat closed slightly, and he was unable to speak for a moment. Turning away from Lian, he headed out of the kitchen, down the small hallway, hovering outside his room.

            Lowly, he asked, “Bruce is back?”

            “Bruce is back. And things are about to really, really change around here.”

              There was a silence. Dick talked a little more, told him that he’d be down there by tomorrow morning, probably, and asked him to give Lian a hug from him, and then they hung up. Not before he said, in an attempt to sound vaguely sympathetic, that Bruce wanted to see him, talk to him, something. Whatever. The man didn’t even have the decency to come back as a supervillain. Weak.

            Holding the communicator in his hands, he looked down at it blankly, numbly. He realized he hadn’t asked what had happened. Had it been a Pit? Jason felt vaguely sick; he’d been the one, just a few months ago, angry and hurt and shouting at Dick for that very reason, for not using the Pits which he _knew_ they had access to. Then again, Jay couldn’t remember if he’d wanted that so Bruce could be back, or so somebody else would know how it feels, to come reeling out of that vitiating pool, burning hot.

            When Jason told Lian that Dick was coming to visit, her eyes lit up and she insisted on a full makeover, so they looked good when he got there. He braided her hair, then painted her nails, then she insisted on painting his as well, a dark red sparkly color. While she did this, he watched reruns of Pokémon, and Lian quoted it aloud to him as she worked. “ _Team Rocket’s blasting off a-gaaain!_ ” The dog fell asleep before the TV, and they left her there for the night.

            She went to bed late that night, excited. “Hey,” he said, tucking her into bed. “How come you never get this happy about hanging out with me?”

            Reaching up, she patted him on his cheek. “Because I hang out with you every day,” she answered. “Night-night, Jay.”

            “’Night, Lian.”

            In the morning, Lian was up and singing the Pokémon theme song before Jason even opened his eyes. Once he joined her, she had him redo her braids, and then they hung up her collage on the fridge, and then she sat in the kitchen, buzzing excitedly, detailing to Jason every single time Dick had ever come visit her and her dad (Jay was particularly interested when she started telling him about “that time when I was seven that Uncle Dick lived with us, and Daddy was really happy that whole time and Dick made a really good mommy,” and then she laughed, but he didn’t press her for details).

            Just past noon, the phone rang again. Jason picked it up, dreading Dick’s half-heartedly apologies at his late-notice cancellation, but all he got was: “Hey, I’m outside.”

            Jay glanced at Lian. “You could just knock,” he replied.

            “Didn’t want to freak out guys out,” he said, then he hung up the phone, and there was a knock on the door, and then it opened and Dick entered the house, a big grin on his face. The dog barked a little bit, tail wagging, but didn’t get up – Jay thought there was something wrong with one of her leg, because she didn’t walk all that nicely. Instantly, Lian dove off her chair in the kitchen, shrieking as she ran over to Dick and threw her arms around him. She was small enough that he could pick her up and whirl her around in a big hug effortlessly, and he did so, then set her back down on the ground. “Hey,” he said, kneeling down to look her in the eye, beaming at her. “How’ve you been, baby girl?”

            “Good,” she said, reaching out to hang around his neck. She took one hand away, waving it in front of his face. “You see my pretty nails?”

            “Nice,” replied Dick, inspecting the sparkly polish. “Very pretty.”

            “Jay has them too!”

            She pointed behind them, at Jason standing (awkwardly?) by the table. He grinned sheepishly and held up his hand, displaying messily painted nails. “ _Very_ pretty,” Dick repeated, standing up straight. To Lian, he asked, “You want to show me around?”

            Lian gave him a grand tour of the farmhouse, then took him out to the garage to show him the truck and the tractor, and then, finally, she introduced him to Taco, whom Dick took to very, very much.

            Dick had brought Lian more books and some candy, but only allowed her to have one piece, settling in on the couch with her on her lap, listening to her talk on and on and on. Jason decided that it did in fact feel really, really awkward having Dick around – suddenly he felt like the Red Hood again, suddenly he realized that this was weird, this was a really messed-up weird arrangement, to have a guy like him taking care of a baby like Lian. He ached for the comforting weight of a gun in his palm, or smoke in his lungs, but knew that Dick would judge him for that and wasn’t about to give the guy that satisfaction.

            God, he hated Gotham. He hated his ‘family.’ He hated the fact that Bruce was back, but Dick had called. He hated the very idea of a Batman running around with a little tiny kid-Robin who was _actually_ his son, flesh-and-blood. Son. He hated that word, most of all.

            Dick and Lian played this game that Jason didn’t know, kind of like I-Spy except way more conceptual; the way she could describe something, anything from a weapon to a specific fighting move to a location, bordered on brilliant. Jay had known she was smart, but this was something else, something he hadn’t even verged near to with her. Then they played Six Degrees of Roy Harper, in which they came to the conclusion that Lian’s father knew pretty much every major superhero by name.

            It was an hour or so into this that Jason realized this wasn’t a game; this was training. He wondered if Dick did this same thing with Damian, although he doubted it – he couldn’t imagine Damian, tiny as he was, agreeing to sit on anybody’s lap. Nor did he think a kid trained by Talia al Ghul would need this kind of mental sharpening. Probably thought he was way above it. Jason didn’t know the kid well, but it seemed like he’d inherited a whole lot from Talia, not just her pretty lips and dangerous eyes. Her stink of aristocracy, elegance mixed with disdain mixed with a cloying threat. Damian had that, too.

            The back of Dick’s head was bandaged pretty tightly, gauze neatly taped. His hair was shorter than the last time Jason had seen him, and he wondered if that bullet in his head was the reason why. Well, to be honest, he really wondered why a bullet to the back of the skull hadn’t killed him, but he’d seen miracles before, so he tried not to linger on that.

            “Hey,” said Dick, later in the evening. He went to the bag he’d brought, kneeling down and zipping it open; the dog padded over, sniffing at his fingers. Fondly patting his head, Dick looked back up at Lian and said, “I brought you a present.”

            “More books?” she asked, joining him, taking hold of Taco.

            “Not quite,” replied Dick, and he pulled something out of his bag. Expertly, he handled the industrial-grade titanium bow. It clicked, unfolding, expanding and locking in place. The thing looked miniature in his hands, like a child’s plaything. And that, Jason realized, was exactly what it was.

            Eyes wide, the color of her nails reflecting that of the bow, Lian took the weapon. “Wow,” she breathed, whispering her fingers along the cold metal. “Wow!”

            “I had it specially made,” Dick said, grinning at her. Jason felt self-conscious. The mere look on the other man’s face was more fatherly than Jay had felt, at all, during the whole time with her. “Just for you.”

            “Thank you,” she murmured, still looking at the thing.

            For a moment longer, Dick beamed at her, and then he said, “So? You wanna see what it can do?”

            She did, and they all went out front, where Dick carved ‘X’s into trees for target practice. She was a better shot than Jay had anticipated, and it seemed like this didn’t surprise Dick. Jason stayed in the rocking chair, the dog sleeping next to him, feeling self-conscious and put-out and a little bit angry that it was so easy for Dick to come and assume every role that Jay had been struggling to manage for months now. _Then again_ , he thought, bitterly, _story of my life._

After a while, Dick said, “Hey, I’ll be right back,” and then left Lian with the bow, letting her test it out, feel what was right. He headed back into the house. As he passed Jay, he said, “C’mon.”

            Jason almost didn’t move. He kept his eyes on Lian and then, painfully, he got up. Followed Dick into the house. He was only in the kitchen, from which there was a clear view through the window to where Lian sat on the lawn. Jay stopped at the kitchen table as Dick retrieved two sodas from the fridge. He placed them on the counter, then looked up at the other man.

            “You haven’t been quiet,” he said.

            Jason blinked at him. “What?” he asked.

            A can sounded its familiar _click-hiss_ as Dick popped it open. “I mean you could’ve done without almost burning the place down,” he said. “And you sure as hell could’ve avoided _killing_ anybody while you were here.”

            Jay gaped at him. “What?” he asked, outrage swelling up in him. “Have you been _watching_ us-?”

            Not quite disdainfully, Dick replied, “Of _course_ we’ve been watching you, Jay, it’d be flat-out irresponsible if we weren’t. We have a lot of security around here, you know. More than you can imagine.”

            “Is that so?” countered Jay, trying and mostly failing to keep the fury out of his voice. “Is that why those two thugs made it all the way out here?” Dick didn’t answer this, but didn’t seem happy, either. “I didn’t kill them because I _wanted_ to, Dick,” said Jay, daring him to say something, to protest. Stonily, he pointed out the window, where Lian still played. “I did it because they were here to hurt her. Don’t know who they were, or who sent them, and I honestly don’t care. But I knew they were here for her. So I made sure they _couldn’t_ hurt her.”

            Unhappily, Dick watched him, soda can in hand. Then he said, with more hurt in his voice than Jay had anticipated: “I guess that’s why Roy chose you for the job, huh?”

            Part of him was too angry to recognize the venom in Dick’s voice as jealousy, but the other part of him rejoiced. They watched each other for a moment, and then Jason shrugged. “Guess so,” he said.

            Dick helped make dinner, and the whole time Lian sat with the dog and they talked and laughed about her father. The whole time, Jason stayed with them and didn’t say much. He didn’t know what to do, where to be. Who to be. He’d spent months not talking about Roy, because he didn’t want to upset her. But with Dick it wasn’t like that, it was easy, it was light, and Jay hated him.

            Naturally, Dick put her to bed. He knelt by the side of the bed and held her hand and talked to her quietly. Jay heard him reassuring her something about her father, and then he said something in a language Jason didn’t know. Then he laughed and asked, “Did I say that right?”

            “No,” answered Lian. She reached out and touched his face, and he let her. Her eyes began to flutter closed, and then, before she slept, she murmured: “ _Ayóó'ánííníshní_ , Dick.”

            He held her hand, and watched her. “I love you too, baby girl,” he said, quietly. “Sweet dreams.” At that he let go of her, kissed her forehead, and left the room. He closed the door completely, unlike Jay, who always left it slightly ajar.

            Jason stood in the hall, arms folded. Nodding at the room, he asked, “What’d she just say?”

            Dick repeated the odd word Lian had said, although he spoke it with little more of a pronounced accent than she had. “It’s Navajo,” he said. “Means, _I love you_.”

            “You say I love you to Roy’s daughter?”

            He shrugged. “I’m the honorary mom.” At Jay’s raised eyebrow, he added, “Not like – I mean not _exactly_ like that. I was with Roy when he brought her home for the first time. That’s always meant something, to all of us.”

            Jason just watched him.

            Knowing something was there in the other man’s expression, Dick asked: “What?”

            “How,” Jason began, “did _you_ make it as Batman?”

            Dick grinned at him. They went back out to the kitchen, where Dick turned down a Diet Coke, citing the caffeine. “Almost didn’t,” he replied, taking a seat at the table there. His eyes were focused on the hall, at the end of which was Lian’s room, behind her closed door. “I messed up a lot,” he continued. “With Tim. With Damian. With Gotham, I guess, in general.”

            “No thanks to me,” added Jason.

            “No thanks to you, sure,” replied Dick, nodding. “But, hey. This one was on me. My responsibility. I took it, I should’ve carried it better.”

            As Dick finally looked back at Jay, the other man glanced down, refusing to meet his eye. “At least you’re done now.”

            Dick watched him, a little smile on his face. “Am I?” he asked. Jason held a can of Coke in hand, fingers circled around the cold base. “Bruce may be back,” Dick continued, “but that doesn’t mean he’s here to stay.”

            Slightly alarmed, Jason began, “What does that-?”

            “It means,” Dick continued, leaning across the table with a little spark in his eyes, “things are changing. Bruce isn’t taking Gotham back, not yet.”

            Dick paused and Jason took the bait. He asked, “What _is_ he doing?”

            “First,” answered Dick, “he’s taking the world.”

            For a moment, Jason said nothing. Then he leaned back in his seat and he asked, doubtfully, “Doesn’t that sound a little dystopic?”

            With a shrug, Dick replied, “Maybe. Think of it as a privatized Justice League.”

            “Owned and run by a rich old white guy.”

            “Sure,” answered Dick. “But look, Jay, I’m trying to offer you a job here.”

            Jason watched him, considering this for a long moment. Things were beginning to make sense. “In Gotham?” he asked.

            “God, no,” said Dick, shaking his head. Fairly, he added, “Well, Bruce said he’d like you back home, and I was the one who said no.”

            This stung, like a flint against the stone of Jason’s heart. Aggressively, he asked, “Why not?”

            “Because,” answered Dick shortly, simply, as if he knew precisely how right he was, “Tommy Elliot’s still around, and I’m not letting him anywhere near you.”

            Where Dick’s last comment had stung, this one struck. Jason felt like his heart stopped and restarted, pumping blood through him slowly, as if hand-cranked, something clenching way back in his jaw and threading around his lungs like steel wire. He was a rock, dropped from a cliff; a stone, thrown into the ocean. He sank. It hurt. Dick still watched him, and didn’t look away.

             Quietly, Jason asked: “How do you know about him?”

            “He was coerced into working for us for months,” Dick said, matter-of-factly. “Tommy likes saying things to hurt us. Just because they’re always taunts doesn’t mean they’re always lies.”

            It was quiet, around them. Because Dick had closed her door completely, Jason couldn’t hear Lian’s gentle snores, and that made him feel unwell. Or much more likely, it was the situation at hand that made him feel so wrong – Dick’s eyes watching him, like he knew far too much. Jay doubted it. Jay doubted he knew anything. It had been a hot day, and was a warm, dry night. A breeze swept in through one of the open windows, cooling him before he even realized how warm he felt, face flushed and humiliated.

            “I didn’t tell Bruce,” said Dick, so that Jason didn’t have to ask. “I said something about you needing to get away, start fresh, and he bought it because he cares about you.”

            Jason stood up abruptly, the chair screeching against the hardwood floor as he moved to the open window above the sink. The organic sounds of the outdoors came rushing in through the screen. Just outside, he could see moths fluttering around one of the porch lights they kept on at all times. Roughly but quietly, Jason asked: “Did he die?”

            Dick didn’t move for a moment. “Bruce?” he asked. Jason nodded. Dick hesitated, then said: “No.”

            Nothing. Echoing the silence around them, Jay searched inside of himself, but came up empty-handed as well. “So,” he said, “Tim was right.”

            At this, Dick raised an eyebrow almost suspiciously. “How did you know about Tim?”

            “I know you kicked him out,” answered Jason, turning around, leaning against the sink. “Same as me. Except this time the kid was still alive.” With a bitter little smile, Jason said, “I can’t decide which is worse.”

            Dick looked up at him. His usually clear eyes seemed full and clouded, but not injured. He was tougher, Jay thought, than he’d been as Nightwing. “Like I said,” he said lowly, “I messed up a lot.”

            There was a short silence. Then Jay asked, “So Bruce is back to fix everything?”

            “No,” said Dick. “Bruce is building something new.”

            Jason closed the window, considering these words. Something still felt unwell in his stomach, calmed only remotely by the knowledge that Dick had said nothing to Bruce about what had been going on, far too long, between Jason and Tommy Elliot.

            Maybe not _far too long_. Only since Tommy finished all his cosmetic surgery, made himself a new face, scarred and macabre, a ghostly imprint of Bruce’s own. At this thought, Jason felt a surge of reluctant gratitude towards Dick, and hated himself for it.

            Dick must have gotten the message, because he got to his feet, stretching slightly. “In any case,” he said, “I can only stay the night. Gotta be home soon. Bruce has way too much on his plate to be dealing with disciplining his worst-behaved son all by himself.” He grinned, thinking that was a peace offering of sorts. “Get her up early, so she can say bye.” Jason didn’t reply. Dick waited for another moment or so, then gave up. Watching Jay, who still stood at the sink, arms folded across his chest and staring down at the ground, Dick said, “Goodnight, Jason. I’ll see you in the morning.”

            Only a nod in reply, and then Dick went off to the spare bedroom on the second floor. Jay and Lian had rarely been up there, but from the kitchen, Jason could hear the other man’s every step, shuffling around, preparing for bed.

            He stood there for a long time, feeling vaguely sick.

            And then he did his nightly check, locking the windows and doors, and then went down the hallway to Lian’s room. He reached her door, which he reached out and gently touched, then did not move. For another minute, he stood there outside the little girl’s room, feeling tired and sick and sad. Then he opened the door just a little bit, peeking into the room.

            Quiet. Lian lay on her bed, her body tiny underneath the covers.

            Then a very small voice murmured: “Jay?”

            He opened the door fully. “You still awake?” he asked wearily.

            “Mhm.”

            He hesitated, then moved forward, going to sit on the edge of her bed. She looked up at him, lying there with her eyes open, holding a pillow as if it were a stuffed animal. Gently, he reached down and brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Why aren't you asleep yet?” he asked tenderly, trying to mask the bitterness he couldn’t shake.

            She shrugged. “Couldn’t,” she said. She paused, then said: “The door was closed.”

            He watched her little face, the dim light from the hallway shining in her eyes. “Why didn’t you just open it?” he asked her, softly.

            She didn’t seem indignant, although it looked like she wanted to. But she could tell something was wrong, something was off about the faraway look in his eyes. “You told me not to,” she whispered, taking his hand and squeezing tightly. “You said when you close the door, I don’t _ever_ open it.”

            His teeth ground slightly. He thought of the men he’d killed, and the look on Dick’s face when he’d brought it up. “Yeah,” he said, stroking her forehead. “But _I_ didn’t close that door. Uncle Dick did. Which means it’s fine.”

            Her eyes flickered in between his, searching for some reassurance that he was telling the truth. Then she reached up and took his face in her hands, gentler than she had for Dick, her fingers just barely brushing against his skin. “I love you, too,” she whispered, and she looked very, very sad.

            He watched her. “You never said it to me in Navajo,” he replied.

            “You don’t know Navajo,” she countered.

            A shrug, as if to say, _Fair enough_. “Does Dick?” he asked.

            Without hesitation, she replied pointedly, “Better than you.”

            “Better than me,” he repeated, and it was more than an evaluation of their respective Navajo linguistic skills. Quietly, he repeated, “Much better than me.”

            There was a silence between them. She still had her hands on his face, and he looked down at her. Then he reached up and removed her hands from his skin, and placed them gently down on the bed. Without saying anything, he got up, and went back to the door.

            “Goodnight,” he said.

            “Goodnight, Jay,” she replied.

            He left the room, closing the door halfway, leaving it just a little more ajar than usual. Above them, Dick’s footsteps had fallen silent.

\----

            Dick left in the morning, before Lian was out of her pajamas. When he reached out to hug her, she didn’t let go, and so he hefted her into his arms and then sat on the couch for a few minutes while she buried her face into his chest, but did not cry. Finally, she let go of him, and he got up, shouldering his bag. “Enjoy your books,” he said to her. “And your bow.” He grinned at her, and ran his fingers through her hair. “Next time I see you,” he told her, “it’ll be with your dad. I promise.”

            Jason hated that he made that promise, because Jay wasn't sure he could keep it. But Dick made it anyway. They got all the way out to the porch, where Dick activated his League transporter codes, before Dick mentioned it.

            “Oh, and,” he said, mere moments from being gone; there was a little smile on his face, and Jay thought it was filled with mirth, but it probably was not. “Happy birthday, Jay.”

            The second he was gone, Lian’s gaze had snapped to Jason, eyes wide, mouth open. “What!” she trilled loudly, gaping up at him. “It’s your _birthday_!”

            “Maybe,” he replied.

            “How old are you?”

            “Eighteen,” said Jay, and then he realized she was probably young enough that she believed him.

            “If you’re eighteen,” she replied as they went back into the house, showing that this was, in fact, too far even for her nine-year-old imagination, “why is your hair white already?”

            “Because of little girls like you,” he said. “Make me worry too much. Gonna be gray all over if you keep at it.”

            “That’s true,” said Lian, sitting at the table as Jason, like every morning, extracted Fruit Loops from the pantry for her breakfast. “I worry about Daddy a lot. Am I gonna go gray?”

            Jason shrugged, pouring milk into her cereal bowl. “You can always dye it,” he said.

            “Why don’t you dye your skunk streak?”

            “What color?” asked Jay, handing her a spoon. Grinning, he asked, “Bright pink, maybe?”

            She giggled. “That’d be cute,” she said. “Maybe someday.”

            He nodded, watching her start in on her Fruit Loops. “Maybe someday,” he repeated, softly.

            Munching her cereal, she asked him, “Can I shoot my bow today?”

            “Yeah,” he said. “If you want.”

            She swallowed, pointing her spoon at him like an accusation. Her braids had all fallen out, and her black hair fell loosely around her little face. “It’s _your_ birthday,” she said matter-of-factly. “We can do what _you_ want.”

            He poured Lucky Charms straight into a mug, no milk, and sat down across from her. Picking the marshmallows out, he said, “I don’t know, what do you want to do? You have all the good ideas, anyway.”

            She watched him, considering this. Then she began, “Do you have a bow? You can shoot with me.”

            “I don’t,” he replied. “Never really used a bow. Guns, mostly.”

            Her eyes lit up.

            Cautiously, he met her gaze. And then he began, “No. Lian. _No_.”

            So it was that an hour later, Jay was setting up cans along a fence in the middle of an empty field. They’d just far enough out that he didn’t think there was anyone around, and despite his head shouting at him loudly that this was a bad decision, he turned back and headed back through the grass to her, where she was sitting on the ground, leaning against the dog.

            “OK,” he said, kneeling down to pick a gun out of his bag. “Let’s start with something simple.”

            He coached her through her first couple shots, keeping his hands on hers, kneeling behind her and getting her used to the kickback, to the loud noise they were blocking with cotton wads in her ears. Eyes covered by a pair of sunglasses, she took too it far too quickly, Jason thought, and he felt partly troubled by that, but mostly really, really proud. Twenty minutes in she hit each target perfectly, so he graduated her on to a slightly larger weapon.

            By the end of it, the sun hanging a little lower in the sky, he had taken a black box out of his big back. Hands working expertly, he assembled the firearm, while she watched behind him. “OK,” he said. “Don’t tell your dad about this.”

            Voice hushed, in awe, Lian asked, “Is that a _sniper_ rifle?”

            “One shot,” he said to her strictly. “You get one shot on this, that’s all, and I’m holding your hands.”

            This didn’t seem to bother her, and she leaned down with him as he explained the make and model, how it worked, what each part did, what she was going to do. Back when he’d been setting up the cans on the fence, he’d jogged another field over, carefully placed one on the rickety wooden fence there, visible only because it was a bright red can (which had previously been filled with tomato soup).

            He moved, allowing her to get into position, lying on the ground behind the thing. Then he knelt over her, careful not to put any weight on her little body, and positioned his hands over hers. She peered through the scope, no smile on her face, determination in her stony little eyes. Gently, he asked, “You see it?”

            “Yes,” she replied.

            “Got it?”

            “Yes.”

            “Control?”

            “Good.”

            “You sure?”

            “You’re holding me,” she replied, rolling her eyes slightly. “What do you think?”

            _One day_ , he thought, tamping down a smile, _you are going to be an incredible woman._ “All clear?”

            “Clear.”

            “OK. When you’re ready.”

            There was a moment of stillness, nothingness. Then a slight click of movement, and she was right, her control was excellent; she kept herself low and the rifle down. Far away from them, a little red can went hurtling off the post of the fence.

            Jason moved off of her, and laughed. “All right,” he said. “Congrats, kid. That was an unbelievable first shot.”

            “You did most of it,” she said, grinning up at him, taking her hands away from the rifle. She let him take her place before it, ready to take it apart again. “I just pulled the trigger.”

            “Hey,” he replied, glancing at her. “That’s what matters.” He went back to the gun, then added, “Now go find Taco, poor girl’s probably scared out of her mind.”

            Taco the dog was hiding behind a tree, not scared so much as barking up at a family of squirrels taunting her. By the time Lian brought her back to where they’d been, out on the grass, he was putting everything away. “So?” he asked, shouldering the weapon-laden bag. “How do you feel?”

            She smiled at him, then reached out and took his hand, holding onto three of his fingers, huge in her tiny grasp. Glancing down at the grass before them as they headed back to the old blue farmhouse, she considered the question for a moment, and then she said, “Powerful.”

            He looked down at her, at the pretty dog limping along beside them, panting. “When’s your birthday, Lian?”

            “January thirty-first,” she said, immediately. “You’re a summer baby, I’m a winter baby. How do we get along so well!” She laughed, then added, “I’m gonna be ten. Daddy said I had to wait until then to keep shooting, but,” she shrugged, “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

            “I’ll have to,” he said. “But I’ll say it was my idea.”

            She squeezed his hand. “OK, if you say so,” she told him. “But it’s not my fault if Daddy gets mad at you!”

            As they walked back, she babbled on about how much fun she’d had, how good she thought she was, how much she wished that Jason could maybe be her special firearms teacher! That would be awesome!

            Jason thought of a question she’d asked him two months ago. _When did you start shooting guns?_

            _Sixteen_ , he’d told her, reminded of the training under Talia’s teachers, each of which he had, in due time, murdered. ( _Executed_.) (No. Murdered.)

            That wasn’t true. Not completely. Jason Todd had shot his first gun at ten years old. He didn’t remember it well but then again he didn’t remember much before the Pit all that well anyway, apart from those last few moments of pain before his heart first stopped. It hadn’t been his, it had been some goon’s, some thug’s who wasn’t important. The recoil had nearly broken his wrist. He didn’t remember sticking around to see what happened to the guy he shot (accidentally? Not accidentally, not if he remembered right). He’d been scared and desperate and cried when he got back to that broken-up shack of a home, crying both because his wrist hurt and he didn’t know what to do to make it better, and because he saw the wide look of surprise in the other guy’s eyes when the bullet pierced his flesh. Those eyes haunted him, finding him in his dreams for months. Years.

            Lian was ten in January. Before bed that night she told him that her wrist kind of hurt and that maybe she’d been holding the gun wrong, and he took one out, unloaded, and showed her precisely the right way to hold it, then had her practice. The house was warm and filled with the buttery sweet scent of chocolate chip cookies – neither of them knew how to bake a birthday cake from scratch, but she recited the recipe for cookies perfectly, as if she were reading right off a page. So they listened to more Taylor Swift and talked about his guns (“I didn’t even get to fire your Bushmaster!” she cried, and he nodded and said, “Yeah, we’re lucky, neither did I”) and ate cookies as the sun set in the drowsy mid-August heat.

            At night, fireflies came out, and they brought the still half-full plate of cookies outside and Jay held them on the rocking chair on the porch as she chased the bugs around. She caught one in a jar. He watched her stop and hold it there for a while, palm pressed flat against the top of the glass mason jar she’d found in the cupboard.

            Then, tenderly, she held the jar out and removed her hand, letting the firefly twist and spiral back up into the air. Lian stood there still and quiet, mesmerized by the lights around her, little stars she could reach out and cup in the palm of her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to my dear friend Sarah, who does not read comics and will never read this fic, but whom I will be seeing for the first time in a year tomorrow night!! Yaaaaay Sarah!!!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the chapter :)


	7. Most Wanted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we come to understand that this whole thing has been an extended metaphor for Jason Peter Todd relearning intimacy (and they finally get that tractor working again).

            It was the first Wednesday of September when they got another call. Lian finished her Language Arts workbook and closed it on the table in front of her, staring down at it glumly. Without glancing up at Jason, she said: “Today’s the first day of school.”

            Jay looked at her, toast in hand, glancing away from the TV playing an old episode of Pokémon. “You OK?” he asked.

            Then she did look up at him. He braced himself for a _Where’s Daddy?_ and for another gentle reassurance that it wouldn’t be too long, any day now – any second really-

            And then, speak of the Devil – the communicator rang.

            It was all the way in his room, because he was still in his pajamas and last night they’d been up really late watching an Adventure Time marathon, so he also wasn’t fully awake. But he saw her eyes widen, and instantly was up, darting into his bedroom and picking up the little phone. “Yeah,” he said, pressing it to his ear; behind him, Lian came to the room as well, pressing against the doorframe, looking up with those liquid little eyes.

            The second Donna spoke, he knew something was different. Good different. He could’ve let out a sigh of relief at the very first word. “We’ve got him,” she said. “Roy’s back.”

            At this, he did let out a sigh of relief, for Lian’s sake. He turned around and grinned at her, and her eyes did not light up, not daring to hope. “He’s done?” he asked, watching her slowly start to unfreeze. “Roy’s coming home?”

            Her eyes widened.

            Donna laughed, “More like Lian’s coming home, I think. Oliver has a place set up for them as soon as they’re ready.”

            “She’s ready,” said Jay, gesturing for Lian to come over to him, then scooping her up with one arm as soon as she did. “This kid is _so_ ready to go home, right?”

            Her voice hushed, still scared, Lian asked, “Is it my daddy?”

            “It’s Donna,” he told her. “She says your dad’s all done. You’re both going home really soon.” Lian stared at him for a second, and then leaned in and quickly latched her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. He readjusted slightly, still holding her with just one arm. Into the communicator, he continued, “How is he?”

            “Better than we thought,” Donna replied, almost proudly. “But not perfect. We’re going to try and make the detox as easy as possible on him, and then we’ll do our best with the arm, then he’ll be good as new. And probably ready to retire from the life and be a full-time dad forever,” and she laughed. He could hear the relief in her voice, and the love. He was glad.

            Lian was starting to get heavy in his arm, but didn’t move from clutching tightly onto his neck. “How long do you think that’ll take?”

            “Two weeks?” she ventured. “I couldn’t say exactly. He’s exhausted. I think now that he’s back, and safe – and he knows she’s safe too – he’ll take his time to get well again before he goes back to her.”

            “She’ll be waiting,” he said, taking a seat on the bed so that Lian could sit on his lap. “Did you know today was the first day of school?”

            “I didn’t know,” answered Donna. There was something in her voice that was _so_ Wonder Woman, and right then and there, Jason wanted to say everything, to let it all bubble up from his insides, everything he’d been keeping and hoarding and hiding for so long. Then she said, “Let me talk to her before I go.”

            He held the phone out to Lian. “Donna wants to talk to you,” he said.

            Lian didn’t move her hands, only looked up at him. He pressed the phone against her ear. “Hi,” she said, quietly. Then she listened to Donna speak, then said, “No, it’s OK. Can I talk to him?” A pause. Her expression didn’t change. “Is he sick?” She almost made a face, then said, “I want you to give him a really big hug for me, OK? And also, say I love him.” As Donna said something back at her, she closed her eyes. “OK, I’ll tell Jay. ‘Bye Donna.”

            She pushed the little phone away from her ear, and looked down at it. Jason held her tight, letting her lean into his chest. “What do you have to tell me?” he asked.

            “Donna said sorry it took so long,” she said, looking up at him. “And that Daddy’s really proud of us.”

            He laughed, gently. “Us?”

            Very serious, she nodded, but said no more. He watched her for a while longer, and then wrapped his arms around her small body. They sat there in silence for a long time.

            Rob had brought the HT cables and fixed the car a while ago, but Lian had been loud and needy that day, and he’d ended up helping her through some of the last pages in her arithmetic workbook. Jason had gone outside and had a cigarette, although he hated to do it; the past week had been heavy for him, and the smoke, the slow drags, the nicotine in his lungs, it was his way of coping. Not healthy, but then again, he never really had been. Since then, Rob had been back twice, and one time he’d fallen asleep on the couch while they were watching _Blade Runner_. That counted as commitment, right?

            He’d also glanced at Jay fondly, watching the other man’s expression, and sniped, “So much for _leaving soon_ , huh?”

            So it was with a heavy heart that Jason watched Rob’s red 2002 Ford F-150 pull up in the evening on the Friday after Donna’s call, knowing that his vague excuse for not committing was now something real, and solid, and coming up within the next week or so.

            “Hey,” called Rob, as he opened the screen door and walked right into the house. As usual, he brought a little plate covered in baked treats, and placed that on the table then turned around to look at Jason and Lian, who sat on the couch. Usually she was excited to see him, but today she said nothing, only watched the TV quietly as Jay replied with a short greeting. Rob stopped, put his hands on his hips, and said, “Oh, no, don’t get up or anything, I’m fine.”

            He exchanged a look with Jason, who glanced down at Lian. Then Rob sat down on the couch’s armrest on other side of Lian, looking at the TV.

            “What are we watching?” he asked.

            “Pokémon,” she replied, in a mutter.

            “Is that Misty?” he asked, peering intently at the screen. “I didn’t even know they showed the old episodes anymore.”

            He glanced at Lian, but she didn’t say anything.

            “Do you play the games?” he asked her. “I had an old Gameboy when I was a kid. Man, I was on that thing all the time.” He laughed, but she didn’t. He reached out to brush his fingers through her hair, and he pulled away from her. “Hey,” he said, voice soft. “What’s wrong?”

            She buried her face into Jay’s shoulder, and he answered for her. “We’ve gotta get home soon,” he told Rob. “Just between me and you,” he said, “I don’t think she wants to go.”

            Rob watched them for a moment, then said, “Yeah, actually. I was wondering about that. School started this week for us, you know.”

            “Her school starts late,” Jason lied. “Bet if she had a teacher like you, she wouldn’t be so scared to go back.” He grinned, and Rob let out a very flattered laugh.

            Reaching out to Lian – she let him touch her, this time – he said, “Aw, I hope so. But school’s school, Donna, and it’s nothing to be afraid of. I bet you’ll love it. Third grade?” he asked.

            “Fourth,” responded Jason.

            “Fourth grade!” said Rob, impressed. “You’ll love it.” She lifted her head slightly, glancing around at him, and he slid off the armrest and tucked himself onto the couch beside her. “Don’t tell anyone I said so,” he added, lowering his voice conspiratorially and glancing around, “but fourth grade is the best grade. Definitely the most fun.”

            She watched him. Then, gruffly, she said: “I’m not afraid of school.”

            He returned her gaze, gentle, loving, teacher-ish. He would make a good father, someday. “Then,” he began, voice soft, “what _are_ you afraid of, princess?”

            Lian didn’t move at all, not even a muscle.

            And then she burst into tears.

            Immediately both men reached out to take hold of her, Rob gently asking, “What’s wrong, princess?” and Jason tugging her onto his lap, just murmuring, “Shhh, shhh.”

            She wept into her hands, and then into Jay’s chest, and didn’t stop for a long time. Both Jason and Rob sat there with her, Jay holding her as Rob gently stroked one hand up and down her back. She was nine, and had been away from everything she knew and scared and alone for a very long time, and she had every right to these tears. So they stayed with her until she fell quiet, face still pressed into Jason’s chest. On the TV, Pokémon had ended, and an episode of Tom and Jerry was playing.

            Without looking up, she muttered, “I’m sleepy.”

            Jay held her. “It’s not even nighttime yet,” he said, glancing outside, to where the sun was setting.

            She lowered her face even more, refusing to look up at either of them. “I wanna go to bed.”

            He considered this for just one moment, and then stood up, lifting her up bridal-style in his arms. With a little nod to Rob, who returned the nod enthusiastically, gesturing for him to go, Jason headed back to Lian’s room and her down on the soft sheets. Then he knelt by the side of the bed, reaching out to take hold of her hand. “Hey,” he said, quietly. “What’s up?”

            She looked at him, her eyes red and wet from tears. She whispered, “I don’t want to go home.”

            He squeezed her hand. “That’s OK,” he said, then he admitted, “I kind of don’t want to, either.” Her lip trembled. He reminded her, “But you’re gonna see your dad real soon. Don’t you miss him?” She nodded, but her eyes were still wide and scared. “Yeah. It’ll be you and Daddy, and it’ll be awesome. You’ll probably forget you were even here in the first place.”

            As soon as he said it, he realized it was the wrong thing to say. Again, she threw her arms around his neck, pulling him in close to her. Her tiny chest shook with cries. “I – don’t,” she mumbled, between her catching breaths, “-don’t – _want_ to forget…”

            He closed her eyes, letting him hold her.

            “I want to be like you,” she said. “And like Daddy, and Donna. I want to be big and strong, Jay, then things can’t hurt me and I can use a gun and even when I was sad I wouldn’t cry.”

            It broke his heart. He said nothing as she sniffled slightly, trying to get herself under control, desperately trying to stop the crying. Then he pulled away from her grip, and he took both of her hands in his, tucking her fingers in the gaps in between his. “Lian,” he said, quietly. “Let me tell you a secret.”

            She looked up at him, cheeks stained with tear tracks.

            “Big people, like me and your dad?” he said, squeezing her hands. “We’re only big because we got more tears inside us. We cry like babies, worse than babies. It’s true. I’ve heard your daddy do it.” She said nothing, but she’d stopped sniffling, lying there with her mouth just a little bit open. “If you wanna cry,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “if you’re scared, whatever you are. It’s OK. Just let me know. Let me know so you don’t have to be crying alone, OK?”

            He tried to laugh, but it didn’t work. As she always did, she reached out one hand, and placed it on his cheek. He wondered why she did this so much, what it meant to her, to touch him on the face. It seemed like an intimate gesture, some kind of connection she forged and controlled, but didn’t quite understand. She whispered: “You too, Jason.”

            He closed his eyes immediately, tightly, and reached up to place his big hand over her tiny one. It occurred to him for not the first time how small she was. He couldn’t move. His heart hurt. A literal, visceral ache, like someone was squeezing it hard, suffocating him. Her fingers crawled up his face, and wiped beneath his eyes. He caught her hand and lowered it to his lips, and kissed her tiny palm.

            He stayed with her until she fell asleep, tucking her beneath the covers as her breath became slow and rhythmic. Then he left the door half open and went back out to the living room, where Rob was still waiting. Outside, the sun had set. It was dark but not yet pitch-black. “Is she OK?” Rob asked, genuinely concerned, and Jay nodded.

            “She’s fine,” he said. “It’s been a long summer.”

            They stood opposite of each other. Rob reached out and took Jason’s hands. Lowly, he murmured, “Are you OK?”

            Jason’s first instinct was to say, “Yes,” and take his hands away from Rob. But he didn’t do that. After a moment of stillness, he crumpled slightly into the other man, dropping his head into Rob’s shoulder, curling his arms around his body. Not weak, but vulnerable, maybe.

            Rob held him. A little while later, when Jason looked up, Rob kissed him.

            The morning came too soon. Sunlight slit in through the cracks between the window shades, warming the room and the big bed under which there was, as always, an unseen collection of weapons. The sheets were tangled around their bodies, pressed together, heating each other.

            Jason was jolted awake by a loud knocking on his door, which was closed. “Jay,” called Lian’s voice, impatient. “Jay, are you awake.”

            Beside him, the other man stirred. Jason tripped over himself getting out of bed, banging his elbow on the bedside table, sending shivering chills down his arm. In pain, he finally got to his feet and stumbled over to the door, opening it just enough to see her.

            Lian did not seem in the least fazed by the fact that he wore nothing but his boxer shorts. “Do you need something?” he asked, rubbing crusty sleepiness from his eyes.

            “Yeah,” she said. “Can I eat the cupcakes Rob left?”

            It took Jason a second to realize that she hadn’t yet realized that Rob had never actually left, and then something clicked into place and he said, “Oh. Oh, yeah.” She grinned, and then he corrected himself. “Wait, no! Not for breakfast, no.” Her face dropped, and her lip jutted out in a faux-pout. “Come on,” he said. “You know better.”

            “Fine,” she said. “Then make me Fruit Loops.”

            Patiently, he told her, “You can make your own Fruit Loops.”

            “Not as good as you can!”

            “Flattery won’t get you anywhere, kiddo,” said Jason, waving his hand at her, as if to shoo her away. “Just go get yourself some breakfast. I’ll be out in a second.”

            She seemed suspicious, but nodded anyways. He closed the door on her, and then looked back in the room. By then, Rob was sitting up in bed, watching him with a contented little smile on his face. The clock by the bed said just past nine AM.

            “Hey,” said Jay. “You’re not late for school, are you?”

            “It’s Saturday,” said Rob.

            They watched each other. Jason leaned against the door.

            Rob lowered his gaze to the sheets on the bed. Then, tentatively, he asked, “Is this where you say,” he glanced back up at Jay, “ _It’s not me, it’s_ …” and trailed off.

            Jason stood at the door for another second, then crossed the room and climbed back into bed. “No,” he said, and he kissed Rob on the mouth again.

            Confidently, now, as opposed to the slow gentleness of last night, Rob placed a hand on Jason’s side. He pulled his lips away and then asked, “Where’d you get the scars?”

            “Fire,” answered Jay.

            “No shit, Sherlock,” said Rob, amused and almost sunny. “What kind of fire?”

            “A big one.” Jason reached out and tapped Rob’s side and asked, “What about you?”

            Rob grinned at him, obviously pleased that he’d noticed the little scars on either side of his body. “I was born with some misshapen cartilage,” he answered. “Got a bar in my chest as a teenager to support my sternum, so it wouldn’t crush my lungs.”

            Jason kissed his neck. “Hot,” he said.

            The other man snorted. “ _Nothing_ on you.” He leaned his head back, exposing the fleshy skin of his throat. Quietly, his Adam’s apple humming with the sound, he muttered, “You’re beautiful.”

            Scars wrapped around Jason’s torso like some kind of wrapping he couldn’t tear off. He had always hated those scars, remnants of the third-degree burns his body must have suffered in the explosion, after his death. No one had ever called them beautiful before.

            When they left the bedroom together, Lian looked up. There was a big puddle of spilt milk right beside her bowl of Fruit Loops, and she said, “Hey! Hi Rob.”

            “Hi Donna,” he said. “Sleep well?”

            She shrugged. “OK, I guess,” she told him. “Did you sleep here?”

            “Yeah,” answered Rob. “Miles and I had a great sleepover. It was really fun.”

            “Good,” she sniffed, approvingly.

            Jay said, “Man, look at what you’ve done,” and tore off a few paper towels, cleaning up the mess she’d made where she spilled milk. “Put the lid back on when you’re done, remember?” he told her, screwing the milk’s pink lid back onto the top, and replacing it in the fridge. He repeated this, and said, “OK?” Rob glanced away for a second, and in that moment, Lian winked at Jason, grinning. He was almost too happy to be embarrassed.

            He walked Rob to his car. “Oh, that reminds me,” Rob said, and then he pulled a trash bag full of something very heavy out of the back of the truck, and handed it to Jason.

            “What’s this?” asked Jay, puzzled.

            “My uncle,” Rob explained, “you know, the mechanic. I told him your tractor wasn’t done yet, and he got kind of offended.” Jason opened the bag and saw a mess of metal parts. “So we put together a little goodie bag. You know, spare parts, tools, stuff like that. Just to make sure you can get the thing running again.”

            Suddenly and unreasonably overwhelmed with emotion, Jason looked back up at Rob. “Thanks,” he said.

            “Yeah,” said Rob. “No problem.” He hesitated, then reached out and took Jay’s hand, the one that wasn’t holding the bag. He pulled him close, and they kissed one last time, lingering on one another’s lips. It was the gentlest kiss Jason had ever been given. Then Rob got into the front seat of the truck. “I’d stay,” he said apologetically, “but today we’re handing out awards for the kids with the most stickers.”

            “Ah,” said Jay, nodding his head, leaning into the open window. “For the summer reading program?”

            With a nod, Rob said, “Yeah. You should come.”

            “Nah,” replied Jason, with a shrug. “Lian’s a competitive little girl. She’d hate seeing other people get awards.”

            Rob looked at him, smiling very faintly, almost as if confused.

            Something slid into place, and Jason realized that Rob was waiting for an explanation. “Oh, right,” he said, straightening up, looking back at the farmhouse. Glancing back at Rob, he said: “Donna’s not her real name.”

            “I guessed as much,” said Rob. “Lian is a very pretty name. It suits her a lot better.”

            “It does,” Jason agreed.

            There was a pause, then Rob asked, “And you?”

            Distractedly, Jay’s eyes slid back to him. “And me?”

            “Is Miles your real name?”

            Jason watched him for a long time, considering this. And then he shook his head. “No,” he said, simply.

            Rob waited. When Jay said nothing more, he prompted, “You gonna tell me what they really call you?”

            Jason shook his head again. “No,” he said.

            The morning was fresh and light, and smelled like grass and the mud caked onto the tires of Rob’s truck. In the house, Lian was leaning into the window, pressing her nose against the glass, watching them. Rob let out a very small little laugh. He said, “I _knew_ you were witness protection.”

            As he drove away, Lian came running out of the house. “’Bye, Rob!” she shouted at the red truck. Rob shoved his hand out of the window and waved back at them, and then he was gone, vanished into the mid-morning clarity.

            Jason glanced down at Lian, holding up the sack of extra tractor parts. “Go get your dirty clothes,” he said. “We’re playing mechanic.”

            She had a pair of overalls with the Powerpuff Girls embroidered on the front that she wore when she didn’t mind getting dirty, but she didn’t seem to have her heart in fixing up the tractor. Instead she waffled around sort of aimlessly while Jason asked, “Hold on, are we supposed to assemble this? I thought it already came assembled?”

            They worked on the tractor for the next few days. Lian still didn’t seem interested; nor was she interested in her Harry Potter book either. Waiting, Jason thought, to have Roy back, so he would read aloud to her.

            It was a precisely one week from when they had gotten the call from Donna that they went into town and checked with the vet, who assured them no one had claimed Taco. “She’s yours,” he said, then added that they could chip her if they wanted to, make sure she never gets lost again. Lian declined. They went into the library, and Jason checked at the front desk again, but then remembered that Rob didn’t work Wednesday afternoons, anyway. They left. She tugged him over to the ice cream parlor, where they shared one big waffle cone full of Black Forest ice cream, and she said goodbye to Maya for good. The old truck only played cassette tape, but Jason had found one of those tapes connected to a CD player at an electronics store in town, and Lian had brought her Taylor Swift, so they played that all the way home. When he stopped the truck, they didn’t get out, instead blasting the AC and playing through the rest of the songs on _Speak Now_.

            They got to the last song. Lian was curled up in her seat, leaning her forehead against the window. She reached out her hand, and took his.

            Taylor sang, _Long live, all the mountains we moved, I had the time of my life, fighting dragons with you…_

            Roy called that night. It was his voice, before Jason could even speak a greeting: “Let me talk to her,” and Jay didn’t even hesitate, just handed the communicator wordlessly to Lian, who took it cautiously, raising it to her ear. “Hello?” she asked.

            The little girl sat on the couch and talked to her father for five hours. For the first two or three, she gave him a running commentary of everything that had happened in the past two – _three_ , now, almost three months that she’d been with Jason, and then she was mostly quiet, lying down on the couch, a big smile on her face, giggling now and then. The dog slept on the floor before the couch, right in front of her. “What did Mommy say?” she asked, and then she listened very intently for a few minutes. She ended the call without even offering the phone back to Jay.

            Jason was in his room when she finished. He’d went in there with the intent to pack, but after a minute or so had realized that he’d never bothered to unpack. Lian stood at the door, holding out the phone. He got up and took it. “What’d your dad say?” he asked.

            “Lots of things,” she said. “He saw my mommy again. That’s a big deal. He never sees Mommy.”

            “Yeah, well,” said Jay. “There’s a reason for that, kiddo.”

            “I know,” she replied. Her eyes, as always, were dark but intelligent, inquisitive, as if she knew much, much more than she let on (then again, from the way she’d been with Dick – maybe she did). Neither of them said anything for a moment. Then she reached up and wrapped her arms around his waist.

            He was taken aback for a moment, and then he returned the embrace. Wordlessly, he knelt down to her height, and hugged her back.

            Lian said, “Daddy’s coming to get me tomorrow.”

            Hollowly, Jason said, “Finally,” and tried to laugh.

            She said nothing, leaning her head on his shoulder. “We should finish the tractor,” she said. But she didn’t move.

            Jason held the little girl tightly, closing his eyes. She clung onto him, in the warm, bare bedroom. “OK,” he said.

            She pulled away from him and took his hand, leading him out back, towards the garage. “Daddy said I could keep Taco, too,” she added. “Unless you want her.”

            The dog padded behind them slightly, lopsided and limping as always. “Nah,” said Jason. “You take her.”

            Almost uncertainly, Lian smiled up at him.

            When they stopped, the tractor was complete. Jay let her turn the key in the ignition, and but they didn’t drive it out of the garage, leaving it there overnight. Jason made her a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich for dinner, and she made one for him. They watched Boomerang cartoons into the night, and they both brushed their teeth in her bathroom, and he promised he’d stay in her bed with her until she fell asleep. Taco slept at the foot of the bed. She was an old dog, and Jason was almost reluctant to let Lian have her, because he knew she wouldn’t last all that much longer. Those were the last thoughts that went through his head that night.

            In the morning, he woke up to someone shouting his name.

            For a single moment, adrenaline pumped into his bloodstream, and he was on his feet, in fear and fury – then he recognized Lian’s high little voice, ringing through the house. Rubbing at his sleepy eyes, he went out of her room, down the hallway, to the front door, where she beckoned at him excitedly. “Is your dad here?” he asked her, the first thought in his mind.

            But she shook her head. “C’mon,” she said, darting away, towards the garage. “I have to show you something!”

            Still in his pajamas, he followed her across the grass in the early morning sun. She tore back the garage door, and revealed the tractor, looking the same as it had the day before. Except– he hadn’t even noticed at first – she’d taped a few block letters cut out of construction paper on the front of it.

            It said: _WELCOME HOME!_

He stared at it for a moment, and then he laughed, putting a hand over his face. “That’s cute,” he said pointedly. “Pretty color.” The construction paper was all colored in a bright pink. “But,” he continued, as she climbed into the driver’s seat, “your daddy’s not coming to live with us. He’s coming to take _you_ home – somewhere else.”

            “Wrong,” said Lian, and then smiled at him.

            He stood in front of the tractor, looking up at her. “Oh, really?” he asked. “You want to explain to me how I’m wrong, little girl?”

            “Home,” she declared, kneeling on the seat gracefully, “is where your heart is.” She eyed him carefully, gaze glancing up and down his body. Lowering her voice, she added, “And I didn’t _say_ this was just for Daddy.”

            Jason stared at her. Then he looked back at the paper letters taped on to the front of the big vehicle. _Welcome home_.

            They were riding the tractor around and around the house in big circles when the sounds of a car rumbling on came up the road, and a sleek black car turned in to the farmhouse’s driveway. Lian screamed when it appeared, and Jay stopped the tractor and lifted her off the seat, onto the ground, and she ran away from him, sprinting on those little legs, to the man who was just getting out of passenger’s seat. Roy Harper scooped his daughter up into his arms and twirled her around again and again, and she laughed so hard she cried. He held her up and kissed her all over her face, and she laughed more and pressed her hands on either side of his face and said, “Daddy! Daddy!”

            On the driver’s side, Dick got out, beaming at father and daughter. He raised a hand to greet Jason, who got off the tractor, padding over to the car.

            “Daddy,” said Lian breathlessly, taking hold of his right hand – shiny and golden, reflecting the light of the sun. “What happened to your arm!”

            “Oh, please,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Now I _know_ somebody told you about that. It should be old news already, baby girl!”

            She laid her head on her father’s shoulder, looking over at Dick. “Hi, you,” he said to her, leaning across the roof of the car. “I told you I’d bring him.”

            Setting his daughter down on the ground again, Roy said, “Come on, let’s go get all your stuff,” and she pulled him towards the house, already babbling excitedly about the new books she’d been reading, and how she’d packed everything already because she _knew_ he was coming, and everything else…

            Dick grinned at Jason. “So,” he said. “How was it?”

            Jason thought about this. “You know,” he replied, “it was OK.”

            From the doorway to the house, Roy’s voice rang out. “Todd!” he called sharply, and Jason looked around quickly. Standing on the porch, Roy held out his hands palms-up, as if expecting an explanation. “What are you doing, man?” he called, and before Jason could ask him what the hell he meant, Roy continued, “Come get your stuff! I got my baby’s bags, but I ain’t carrying yours,” and headed back into the house.

            Confused, Jason turned back to Dick, who smiled. “We’re here to pick you up,” he said. “The both of you.” When Jay just stared at him, Dick chuckled slightly. “What?” he asked slyly. “You didn’t think we’d just leave you behind, did you?”

            Twenty minutes into the ride, and six Taylor Swift songs later, Roy exclaimed, “Fuck! Did I really forget to pack you that mix tape I made!”

            Lian thrust her hand towards her father, who sat with her and the dog in the back seat.

            “Swear jar,” she said, expectantly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading!!!!! <3
> 
> Shoutout to tumblr user yancybecket, my dear collaborator in Earth-28, from whom a couple of Jay's lines in this chapter come directly.
> 
> If you want to see some badass older!Lian kicking ass, then check out my other fic, Fiat iusticia. It's mostly about the Batfam, but Lian's a key character, especially in later chapters. Stay until the end of that fic to find out some ~~secrets~~ about her, too :)
> 
> But stick around! The epilogue's coming soon :3


	8. The First Step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gotham is terrible. But not all of its people are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue! This is focused solely on Jason. This is a companion piece to artzybee's fic Mistakes of the Best Kind (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1602902), which is also Earth-28 canon, and sets up one of our main relationships: Jason Todd/Tam Fox (aka Double Fox). It is the same story, except told from Jason's POV.
> 
> Warnings for some fairly intense violence and implied past sexual abuse.

            A month ago he’d been braiding a little girl’s hair and letting her cry like the baby she was into his shoulder, but now he was crouching on a warehouse rooftop the harbor, on his usual route, and he was not happy.

            He hated it in Gotham. He hated it, and he had no idea why he’d come back; Dick, at least, had wanted to send him away, with the excuse that Tommy Elliot was still around and he wanted to protect Jason. But it was more likely, so Jay had discovered in the weeks he’d been back, that Dick wanted him out of Gotham so he wouldn’t know how profoundly little Bruce cared about him. No meeting. No message. Not even so much as an acknowledgement that Jason was now, officially, no longer the only one in the family to have come back from the dead.

            No, that wasn’t right, Jay thought sourly. Bruce hadn’t even had the good graces to die properly in the first place.

            Jason hated Gotham and he wanted out, but he was petty and reckless, especially when he was hurt, and he wasn’t about to leave until Bruce at least _looked_ at him. Plus Dick wanted to hook him up with Roy and Kory again, but Jay knew for a fact that Roy wouldn’t be ready for another mission for another few months at the very least. He dropped down from the roof, heading through an alley, red helmet bright and unrepentant in the dark, colorless streets.

            It happened very, very fast. But that was no excuse.

            Blow to the kidney, arm around his neck, knees kicked out – then a knife slipped beneath his ribcage, and he gasped, arched his back and rocked backwards with his head, knocking whoever it was who’d attacked him right in the face with the hard shell of his helmet. Something far too strong ripped at his body armor, and that same knife tore across his skin. He shouted in pain, furious like a wounded animal. _Dammit_ , he should’ve seen them coming, what an _amateur_ mistake-

            A gunshot, and then a bullet dug itself deep into his right shoulder. He suspected the knife had punctured a lung. It had been but seconds, and already he found it hard to breathe. Someone big and heavy threw him to the ground, and it hurt. (He tried to focus, clearing his mind with pain, there was more than one, these guys were trained, not just your average muggers-) but everything hurt, and he still wasn't thinking right.

            The big one dropped a knee on his back and pressed all his bodyweight down, squeezing the air out of Jason’s lungs. The slash across Jay’s chest, not deep but big and jagged, meant to wound, not kill, ground into the cement below them. It stung, and slicked the ground beneath him with blood. The feeling made him at once terrified, and terrible like an angry dog. It used to make him panic and think, _I’m gonna die_ , but now his fear and rage was all much more clinical. _If they apply pressure for another two minutes I’ll black out, and I can probably slow my breathing and fake it earlier; if not, this is where it ends. Again._ He knew, only too well, exactly what would cause his heart to stop.

            Someone smashed his head against the ground. The helmet held, protecting him from the worst of the damage, but his nose still hit sharply. Hot blood filled the space before his mouth, and he couldn’t tell if it was streaming from his nose, or from a split lip.

            The big guy leaned down. Through the pain, Jason could feel the warmth of his body, leaning across his. In his mind’s eye, Jason could almost see the guy’s awful leer.

            A whisper growled into his ear, picked up by the helmet’s sensitive microphones: “ _Doctor Elliot says welcome home_.”

            In a shot of pure, wrathful fury, he threw his head back, hitting the guy in the face; he kneed up into the guy’s crotch, hard, and rolled off from underneath him – a spray of bullets came his way and every nerve in his body screamed against it, but he kicked against the wall for leverage and flipped above the frantic, uneven shooting. _Keeping their distance,_ he thought, hazily.  _Good_. _Too scared to touch me_.

            He pulled out the gun he kept strapped to his thigh – the one lethal weapon he took out on regular patrol – and shot three times, then twice more behind him without looking. Two goons collapsed before him, the slug tearing ragged holes into their forehead. Behind him, the big one fell.

            There was one more. A skinny kid, with big eyes above a surgical mask, holding the gun out with shaking hands. Jason raised his own gun at him. “Put the gun down!” the kid called. His voice broke. “Or I’ll kill you!”

            Jay didn’t lower his weapon.

            For a moment, neither of them moved. Then two shots were fired at once, and the gun was knocked out of the kid’s hands and a bullet grazed Jay’s thigh.

            Calmly, Jason said: “Tell Tommy Elliot he can go fuck himself up the ass.”

            The kid clutched his bleeding hand, eyes bulging at Jay.

            “Use those words exactly,” he added, then he lowered his gun because he didn’t want the kid to see his arm shaking. “That’s crucial.”

            Then, ignoring his pain, making a big show out of it for Tommy’s thug, he grabbed hold of the fire escape on the brick wall of the nearest building, and scaled his way up to the roof, disappearing into the night. He didn’t know where he was going, but he was riding the high of the moment, trying to mask the fear and disgust and hatred of Tommy knowing he was back with the satisfaction of pissing the guy off.

            The fatigue hit him all at once. He was a block away from a safehouse – not his favorite one, but something that’d do – when he slowed down, panting for breath, unable get himself onto the roof of the next building. His gut hurt, and so did his shoulder, and his nose and mouth. The heavy, stifling scent of blood pooled in his helmet, and it was hot and uncomfortable. He wanted to take it off, but couldn’t risk it. The warmth and damp hurt his head, but also was the only thing that made him feel safe anymore.

            Vision was blurry even through the helmet’s special lenses. He toed the edge of a building, so close to a warm bed and first aid kit. It was kind of a richer, nicer part of town, and that made him feel even sicker.

            The first time he blacked out, he fell. No one caught him, but fortunately it wasn’t all the way into the alley; only halfway down, banging onto the hard metal fire escape. The pain in his left arm, twisted unnaturally beneath him, woke him up. Willing himself to get to his feet, he groaned. He barely managed that, but, as the blood pumped slowly through his head, syrupy and dense, he decided that the ground was the safest place for him, all things considered. Another fall, and he might not be so lucky.

            So that was how he stumbled to the dirty ground in the alleyway, clutching alternatively his injured shoulder and the stab wound below his ribs. No, he’d only been panicked before; it definitely hadn’t punctured a lung (the rational part of him pointed out, _If it had, you’d be dead by now_ ). Grunting with pain, he slid down a wall, clutching his body. _Dead_ , he corrected himself, eyelids fluttering closed, as hard as he fought to keep them open. _Or dying_.

            Everything became very dark, and quiet except for a very low buzzing, and the last thing he thought of before he lost consciousness was the guy’s hot breath at the back of his neck, Tommy’s words, pink construction paper taped onto a tractor: _Welcome home_.

\-----

            His mind was hazy, when he started to wake up.

            There were hands. Someone was touching him. They didn’t seem to be hurting him, and there was no adrenaline left, just a sluggish, slow throbbing everywhere in his body. That touch was gentle, so that was how he knew it couldn’t be Tommy.

            Thinking of Tommy made his stomach flop. _Shit_. He hadn’t been taken, had he? He wasn’t with Tommy anymore, was he? No. He’d ended that, hadn’t it? He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here, wasn’t he just with Lian? Didn’t he have to do something for her? God, he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t even think. Sandwiches? The tractor. Something about the tractor.

            A spike of urgency jolted through his heart as he felt fingers curl around his neck, someone _touching_ him someone _too close_ his fingers clenched for the familiar weight of the gun in hand – he knew that touch, that reach for switch which would disable the helmet, and instinct kicked in. He could practically hear Bruce growling to him, “ _The mask_ never _comes off_ ,” and remembering Bruce made him really, really, really pissed off.

            The barrel of the gun touched soft skin. He fingered an explosive, not bothering to break it off his waist, and whispered, “Flip that switch and I’m taking this whole place out, you and me.

            Whoever it was, they fell backwards, and Jason made himself move, taking their collar and pressing the gun harder into their throat. He blinked blood out of his eyes, trying to see straight. Was it really so dark, or was his vision still not back? It wasn’t Tommy, too small to be Tommy, it wasn’t Lian, too big to be Lian, was it, what was his name, the boy, the boy Jason had kissed _not_ _Tommy_   the other boy, with the kind eyes Jason couldn’t think straight, nothing was making sense, “Tell me who you are,” he said bluntly, in pain, “and where the hell I am,” he _wasn’t_ with Tommy, he knew that, but his heart was still pumping in fear, “and things won’t have to get ugly.”

            She stammered something back at him. OK, she. He could tell that much. It was a woman, a full-grown woman, so not Lian. She said a name he knew, and he latched onto it, picking a point and focusing on it, trying to rescue his grip on reality.

            “Where is Red Robin?” he demanded.

            Panicked, she replied, “He’s not here! Nowhere near here! We’re the only ones here!”

            What was she saying? Everything seemed slow and hard and confusing for him. He knew, rationally, that she seemed to know who he was, and that she knew Tim somehow, so he had no reason to shoot her, but he was still angry and scared and wanted to pull the trigger, mostly because he just wanted to shoot _something_.

            He glanced away from her, around at their surroundings. Yes, he’d been right; Tommy wasn’t around, and this looked like just some random alley. Not the Elliot Mansion, but then again, not a blue farmhouse in Kansas, either.

            “Here’s how it’s going to go,” he said lowly, roughly letting go of her collar and backing away, gun still pointed at her. “You’re going to walk away like a good little girl and not tell a single person about our little rendezvous tonight and I’m not going to shoot your pretty little head full of holes. Do you hear me?” The words fell out of his mouth by rote, and she nodded, and he watched her. As he turned to go, the wooziness hit him again, and the wound on his thigh burned. He fell. He had lost too much blood, and he knew it.

            So did the woman, apparently. Instantly, she was by his side. “Are you all-?”

            Her hand brushed against the wound on his shoulder, sending pain down his spine, her fingers brushing against his bare chest he _hated that feeling get away DON’T TOUCH ME-_

            It took her flinching away in fear for him to realize he had shouted that last thought out loud at her. Everything hurt. _Close your eyes, Jay. Regroup. This is_ not _the worst you’ve ever been_.

            The woman told him, “You need help,” and if he didn’t feel like death walking, he would have rolled his eyes. Maybe Tim would've taken her up on that kindness, but Jay wasn't about to fall for it. Fallen too many times before.

            “I need you,” he replied, “to stop talking.” She said something else, said Tim’s name again, which wounded him even more. Who the fuck cared about _Tim_ _Drake_ at a moment like this? “What makes you think I even want his help?” he growled, dragging himself to a wall, and sitting in the gutter water, head leaned back and eyes closed beneath the protection of the helmet. The night was hot, but there was a sheen of cold sweat over his skin.

            “Let me… let me help you,” said Lian.

            He lifted his head, looked into the girl’s face.

            It wasn’t Lian. Oh, good. On top of it all, he was hallucinating. “Let me help you,” she said again.

            In the darkness, he closed his eyes again. If only she had been the little nine-year-old. At the thought of her face, even through the pain, he almost laughed. Tiredly, he looked at the woman again, and asked her, “What could you possibly do for me?”

            She didn’t touch him, but said that she had a first aid kit, and that if he would just wait here, then she’d be right back. With that, she was gone.

            For a moment, he didn’t move, playing the conversation over in his head. Now that he knew Lian’s face was only in his head, it felt like he had a better grip on what was going on. “ _I’m – I’m Tam Fox and I’m a friend of Tim’s!_ ” Tam Fox. The name sounded familiar, and he knew why, but his brain was working so slowly that he couldn’t quite figure it out. As he slowly got to his feet, kicking trash and dirt over what remained of his blood on the ground, grinding it all together into a disgusting mess indistinguishable from mud, he tasted the name over and over again in his mind. Tam Fox. Tam Fox. Fox.

            He pried the helmet off his head as soon as he stumbled into the safehouse, going to the bathroom and stripping his clothes off. There was no proper shower, but he wet a rag and ran it all over his body, cleaning off the blood and dirt and grime. He extracted the bullet from his shoulder with tweezers, then stitched up his wounds as best he could. Fox. He knew a Fox. Bruce did. So, apparently, did Tim.

            Although he was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to sleep off a concussion, and he was equally sure he definitely had a concussion, he was too exhausted and his mind too hazy to allow for anything else.

            _Tam Fox_ , he thought, before he drifted off into a restless, sweaty, haunted sleep.

            _She could be trouble._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading!


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